


time out of mind

by aknightley



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fake Marriage, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pining, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-17 08:26:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9313436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aknightley/pseuds/aknightley
Summary: Keith and Lance wake up married. In the future.He lays there a moment, processing the faint throbbing in his head, a strange bitter taste like lemons in his mouth. When he opens his eyes, the room spins wildly into a kaleidoscope of colors, so he closes them again, breathing in and out until he feels less like he might throw up. He suddenly registers a warm weight over his waist, and lifts his head to see a brown arm thrown over him. It looks startlingly familiar, but different, bigger than he remembers, more toned.Keith turns all the way around and comes face to face with Lance sleepily blinking his own eyes open.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been a thorn in my side since late October, and it floundered for a solid two months at 6k and then was finished in about 22 days. It's something I wanted to do for a long time and wanted to finish because it combined a lot of my favorite tropes, and I hope you like it! 
> 
> Thank you to both Sarah and Sven, who put up with a lot of complaining, a lot of anxiety, and who made me laugh throughout writing this. They also provided one of the most entertaining betas I've ever had on a fic. You guys are the best, and Momgan loves you! 
> 
> Title comes from Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, "Dirge Without Music."
> 
> ETA: Now featuring AMAZING art by [umbrellanest](http://umbrellanest.tumblr.com)! You can find it [here!](http://umbrellanest.tumblr.com/post/156115812869/huh-were-that-couple-i-drew-a-small-part) PLEASE go like and reblog, it's fantastic art ;A;

 

Keith should be used to this kind of thing by now -- the whole 'meeting new people is mandatory, diplomatic conversations are necessary for our cause' thing. They've been paladins of Voltron for almost a year now, and they've saved and fought alongside a dozen different groups of aliens, but somehow he's still uncomfortable and unprepared for actually dealing with them. The stilted conversations, the formal clothing, the underlying tension that says 'we don't quite trust each other but we're going to try to work together' -- all of it makes for a bad experience in Keith's opinion.

Allura is as sharp as ever, gracious and implacable by turns, neither giving nor taking too much. She wears a smile that puts everyone at ease, but she never seems like she's someone you could cross, a balancing act Keith knows he could never hope to imitate. Shiro might be able to, but Shiro seems content to let Allura lead the conversation, offering input only when she turns to him. The rest of the paladins and Coran stand attentively behind them, trying to look like the defenders of the universe instead of a ragtag group of teenagers.

Keith is trying to pay attention to the conversation Allura and Shiro are having with the aliens they're currently trying to convince to join their alliance, but Lance keeps fidgeting next to him and it's _really_ distracting. Lance is distracting on any given day, but he's especially excited to be on this planet, and has been for the last hour and a half. There's a beach nearby, as well as a flourishing trade center, and Allura has given them permission to explore as soon as negotiations are done. A few of the aliens not currently engaged in conversation are casting curious glances at him as he shifts from one foot to the other and crosses and uncrosses his arms, bumping into Keith. Keith, already on edge from being surrounded by so many strangers in a situation he has little to no control over, feels something in himself snap, and he nudges Lance back.

"Can you _calm down_?" he hisses between his teeth. Lance stills and then turns to look at him, frowning. He’s got his lower lip caught between his teeth, worrying it until it pops out reddened. Keith's irritation spikes.

"What's your deal?" Lance whispers back, just as heated. They've got their heads bent together so hopefully no one can hear them, but Hunk is giving them a look out of the corner of his eyes. Keith ducks even closer, flushing a little.

"You're distracting, so stop moving so much," Keith says. Shiro glances at the two of them out of the corner of his eye and raises an eyebrow; Keith grew up reading that look on his face, the pleasantly benign one that says _K_ _eep it up and you're gonna regret it_. He flicks his eyes to Lance, then back to Shiro, and raises his own brows, clearly explaining who's responsible, but Shiro just frowns and turns back to Allura and the aliens. Keith scowls at him even though Shiro is deliberately ignoring him to watch the negotiations now.

"You're not the boss of me?" Lance whispers incredulously. "No one cares, go back to being all moody and silent."

"You're drawing attention," Keith says, reaching out to grab Lance's arm as he starts to shift back and forth between his feet again. "Seriously, just--"

"Lance, Keith, what are you doing?" Allura's voice is cheerful, but with an underlying tone of danger that has Keith letting go of Lance and facing forward immediately. Next to him, Lance also freezes. Allura is still smiling, but it's icy enough that Keith shivers.

"The Red and Blue Paladins?" asks one of the alien leaders, possibly _the_ alien leader. Keith thinks her name is Klessia, but he's not positive. She blinks all three of her eyes at them and Keith struggles to keep from grimacing at the extra attention. Lance is wearing a smile similar to Allura’s, but the edges wobble a little. Behind Allura, Shiro is covering his face with one hand. "Is something wrong?"

"Uh," Keith starts, unsure of how to proceed.

"This is normal," Pidge assures her, adjusting their glasses. Keith resists the urge to shoot them a grateful look, since they've successfully diverted the attention onto the whole group instead of just Keith and Lance. "They wouldn't know what to do if they weren't arguing about something." Keith changes his mind about the grateful look immediately.

"That is normal?" Klessia asks, blinking slowly again. Keith gets the feeling that blinking heavily the way she's doing means something different for these aliens than it might on Earth, but he's still uncomfortable with how judgey it feels. "You should be amiable, as Paladins of Voltron, should you not?"

"It's fine," Lance says, waving a hand at her and smiling charmingly. He seems completely normal now, like all of his earlier nervous tension has dissipated for some reason. Keith wonders how he can switch between feelings so easily. "We're fine, this is always how it's been between us and,” he says, casting a unpenetrable glance at Keith, “it's always gonna be that way."

"And Voltron is fine," Keith adds, just because it _is_ , and he doesn't want the aliens they're trying to form an alliance with to doubt that. Allura is smiling so widely her mouth must hurt, but she doesn't say anything. Shiro raises his eyebrows at Keith again.

Klessia is quiet a moment, staring deeply at them, and then looks at her fellow leaders and leans in close to them. One of the aliens closes two of their three eyes and goes very still for several long minutes. Keith glances at Lance, who returns his confused look. The alien makes a soft humming noise and then opens their eyes again. Klessia whispers to them, and they reply in what looks like an affirmative. They confer in soft voices for a moment, and then Klessia turns back to them. She almost looks like she's smiling.

"We would like to show you that it will not always be the case, Red and Blue Paladins. Please take my hands." She holds out both hands to each of them. "This is a common practice among our people when there are disputes."

Keith and Lance look to Allura, who sends a look at Coran, who shrugs helplessly. Lance hesitates for a second and then puts his hand in one of Klessia's, and Keith feels obligated to do the same. Her skin feels like the scales of a snake, soft and cool to the touch.

"Sorry, what exactly is this again?" Shiro asks, stepping closer.

"A glimpse into the future," Klessia says, and closes all but one of her eyes. The one in the middle, the largest one, turns completely dark, like it's absorbing all of the light around it. Keith feels a hooking sensation in his chest, like someone has reached into his ribcage and pulled at whatever they could grab -- he gasps, and the sensation travels up to his head, to his brain, to his mind and he shouts and he hears Lance shouting and he --

Wakes up, sprawled on his stomach across a bed, body heavy, head aching.

He lays there a moment, processing the faint throbbing in his head, a strange bitter taste like lemons in his mouth. When he opens his eyes, the room spins wildly into a kaleidoscope of colors, so he closes them again, breathing in and out until he feels less like he might throw up. He suddenly registers a warm weight over his waist, and lifts his head to see a brown arm thrown over him. It looks startlingly familiar, but different, bigger than he remembers, more toned.

Keith turns all the way around and comes face to face with Lance sleepily blinking his own eyes open.

And it is Lance, it can't be anyone else, but it's not the Lance he was just with -- this Lance has lines around his eyes, a sharper jaw and stubble across his face. It's the same face he's seen every day for the last nine months and yet completely different, shifted slightly in ways Keith can't quite explain. Only his eyes are exactly the same, that bright dreamy blue, the blue of a midmorning sky, framed by the same long lashes. Lance blinks once, twice, and then inhales sharply and sits up in bed.

"What the -- _Keith_?" he asks, clutching the sheets to his chest -- which is naked, Keith notes with dawning horror. Lance reaches out with one hand towards Keith's face and then jerks it back, running the hand through his hair in agitation. "I'm dreaming. This is a dream."

"Unlikely," Keith replies, sitting up himself. He's wearing a sleep shirt, thankfully, and they both seem to have pants on. The bed is made up of rumpled blue sheets, as unfamiliar as the room they're in. Keith looks around, searching for some explanation, but the room is empty of other people. There are framed portraits hanging on the wall, pictures of the two of them and the rest of the team as well. There are clothes piled in one corner of the room, little bits of machinery and books on one table, tools and maps on another. Lance's armor is stacked up on a couch in the corner of the room, slightly scuffed up.

"What happened?" Lance asks, pressing the heel of his palm against the socket of his eye, sounding slightly frantic. "One moment we're talking to that alien lady and the next we're -- we're in bed together and you look like, way older, dude."

"You do too," Keith retorts, reaching up to touch his own face. It doesn't feel any different, but when he runs a hand through his hair, it feels shorter, cropped closer to his head. His body feels different too, not really any bigger, but harder, aching faintly at his joints. He's running his fingers along his forehead to feel for wrinkles when Lance makes a noise deep in his throat and grabs his hand, pulling it towards him.

"What the fuck, Lance," Keith protests, trying to pull away, but then he catches sight of what Lance noticed. There's a plain silver ring, set with a small blue gem, sitting innocently on his finger. Lance is staring at it with wide eyes. Keith's stomach twists sharply at the sight, at how comfortable it feels around his finger. It feels like something he's worn for a very long time.

"Are you -- are we --" Lance stutters, and they both look sharply at Lance's left hand. There's a matching ring on his finger, except there's a small red stone set in his. When he shifts, it glints in the glowing overhead lights. Lance holds his hand up and stares at it with wide eyes, and Keith makes himself look away and tries to focus on the matter at hand.

"Okay," Keith says, trying to be calm, breathing as slowly as he can, "I'm supposed to believe that we're supposed to not only be _older_ , but we're also apparently married. Is that what I'm getting here?"

Lance makes a stifled noise and flings himself back down onto the bed. His bare chest is long and lithe, and Keith tries not to remember the feeling of him pressed along his back, the warmth of his arm around his waist, the familiarity of it all. Keith is not familiar with this. Or Keith wasn't yet familiar with it. Or something.

"What's going on?" Lance whispers to himself, covering his eyes with his forearm. His thumb worries at the ring on his finger, pushing it side to side.

There's a tablet sitting on the corner of the nightstand next to the bed. Keith grabs it and pushes past all of the notifications to find the date and time -- it's about eight in the morning of their artificial day, and also apparently ten years into the future.

"I'm -- twenty seven," Keith says, strangled, staring at the screen and trying to make sure he's reading correctly. "It's. Ten years from where we were."

"We're going to be _thirty soon?_ " Lance yelps, sitting up again. He pushes the sheets down and rushes into the bathroom connected to their room, presumably to look at himself. 

"That's what you're really worried about right now?" Keith yells after him, skimming through the tablet -- there are an astounding number of selfies that prove that this particular tablet really belongs to Lance, but there are a lot of pictures of Keith as well, and of the two of them together. Keith can see himself in these pictures, but he thumbs over to the camera just to see what he looks like right now.

His face is mostly the same, just slightly longer, slightly more tired. His hair has been trimmed up, his bangs mostly out of his eyes, the back of his his neck is bare. He looks _\-- mature,_ is the only word he can think of. There are soft wrinkles at the corner of his eyes and around his mouth, and there's a thin white scar he doesn't remember having on the side of his jaw. He traces it and wonders what the _hell_ is going on.

"This could be worse," Lance calls from the bathroom. "I think I look pretty handsome, actually. You must have locked it down to keep everyone else from trying to get a piece of this." Keith drops the tablet onto the bed and pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling.

The only thing keeping him from thinking this is some fucked up hallucination is the fact that honestly, he's been expecting something like this to happen -- not the whole married to Lance thing, or even just that he'd end up in his future self's body, but the time travel thing had been something he and Pidge had discussed the probability of several times. Combine that with the unpredictable nature of alien evolution and Keith is honestly just lucky that he hasn't ended up in some kind of dystopian future, although there could still be a chance of that being true.

Lance pops his head out of the bathroom and eyes Keith. "Are you okay, dude?"

Keith huffs out a soft laugh before he can help it. Even though their fighting is what brought this on, he can't help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief that Lance is here with him, _his_ Lance -- the Lance who takes everything in stride and apparently isn't panicking at the thought of being married to Keith ten years into the future. It's probably the only thing stopping him from throwing himself back under the covers and smothering himself.

"Yeah. We should -- figure out what's going on," Keith says, reluctantly standing up out of the bed. The lingering warmth leaves him shivering, and he hurries to what looks like a closet door and pulls it open. There are clothes from what look like a dozen different countries or cultures in there, but thankfully there's a pair of what look like Earthen jeans and a black sweater. The jeans thankfully fit, but the sweater is much too large and smells faintly of peaches. Keith pulls it on and realizes, smoothing it down over his chest, that it probably belongs to Lance.

He glances at Lance, who's digging through the piles of clothing in the corner, and takes in how broad his shoulders are, how long his torso is. He's still shirtless. Keith rolls his eyes at himself and pulls on a pair of boots that were on his side of the bed. He actually feels better dressed, like he's got one more layer of reality between him and whatever's going on.

When Lance is dressed as well, they stare at each other from across the room. Lance clears his throat after it stretches on for too long. "So I'm gonna take a wild guess and say we're still in space," he says, gesturing out the window where stars and darkness reflect back at them. "And this looks like the castle, so we're probably still with the crew."

"We shouldn't tell them what's going on," Keith says abruptly.

"Why?" Lance asks, wrinkling his nose. "Maybe they can fix it. If this is the future then--"

"We don't know what might happen if we told someone," Keith points out. "Klessia didn't explain anything, and if this _is_ the future, or some kind of parallel world, or _whatever_ , I'd rather not fuck it up. Or risk people thinking our future selves have gone insane. There's too many variables involved in time travel to risk it right now."

Lance still looks dubious but eventually nods his head. "Fine, we can keep it a secret. For now. Our first priority should be getting back to our own time, but -- that lady didn't say anything about how to go back, did she?"

"She didn't say much of anything," Keith mutters. "Listen, let's just. Go out and see who's around and maybe we can dig up some information on her, or ourselves, or _something_."

Just as they're about to open the door, Lance stops him with an outstretched arm. "If we're keeping this a secret, that means we have to act married. Can you do that?"

Keith flushes and crosses his arms. "Do you honestly believe that marrying each other means we got transplanted with different personalities or something? Just stay quiet and it'll be fine."

"I think I probably married you for your romantic conversation," Lance says to himself thoughtfully, and then loops an arm through Keith's and pulls him out the door. Keith stumbles a little but regains his footing, reluctantly holding onto Lance. "Where to first, _babe_?"

"Don't," Keith says, pained. "Let's go see if anyone's in the dining hall. It's probably still early enough for breakfast. Everyone is--"

Lance jerks to a halt, pulling Keith with him, and Keith starts to scowl at Lance but stops at the look on his face. Lance's brow is furrowed and he looks worried. "What is it?" Keith asks, tightening his hand around Lance's bicep.

"What if -- what if we're not all there?" Lance asks, voice small. Even though he looks physically older, he's suddenly more vulnerable than Keith's ever seen him. "It's ten years into the future and we've almost died like, eight times in just nine months in our time. What if--" He stops himself before he finishes the sentence, looking sick. Steeling himself, Keith turns to step in front of him and pulls Lance's face down by the chin to look him in the eye. Lance's eyes widen in surprise, but he doesn't pull away.

"Listen," Keith says firmly. "You and I both know how capable our team is. We're alive in this future, and I believe that the rest of them are too." Lance looks unconvinced, so Keith takes a deep breath. "If something has happened we -- we just have to push through it, okay? We don't know anything about what's going on, so -- nothing is set in stone, alright?"

Lance continues to stare, and Keith realizes how close he's standing all of a sudden, dropping his hand from Lance's face and stepping away. Lance makes a face and grabs Keith's arm again.  

"Alright," Lance says quietly. "Let's go find out."

The dining hall is quiet when they walk into it, but Pidge is sitting at the table, tapping furiously at a computer screen. Lance's shoulders go loose at the sight, and Keith lets out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. They approach cautiously, looking for any signs of something out of the ordinary.

"Hey Pidge," Lance calls, and they look up and quirk a small smile. Pidge must be twenty four or so now, but they look younger, still all huge eyes and messy hair. Their limbs are longer and they seem to be missing their glasses, but they look more or less the same as Keith remembers. Their hair, however, is cropped short, curling up around their cheeks and sticking up in spikes as they drag their hands through it before looking up.

"Morning, you two," Pidge says, and then yawns. "You guys are up early."

"Keith was hungry," Lance says, letting go of Keith to ruffle Pidge's hair as they pass by. They swat at him and slump back in their seat, rubbing their eyes.

"Did you stay up all night?" Lance asks, staring at them intently, and Pidge raises an eyebrow at them and shrugs their shoulders. They look tired, but not exhausted, tilting their head back and forth as if working out an ache in their neck, stretching their arms above their head. As they do, Keith notices a black mark curving around the back of their left arm under their sleeve that he can't make out from here.

"Maybe. I was just trying to fix some bad coding and I got caught up." They yawn a little and gesture towards the kitchen. "I think Hunk has some breakfast going. Tell me if there's any bagels, okay?"

Keith glances at Lance, who mouths _bagels?_ at Keith where Pidge can't see. Keith shrugs his shoulders and starts walking away, Lance following close behind him.

The kitchen looks more or less the same as Keith remembers, although there are several appliances that look like hybrids between Earthen and alien technology. There are also a few pictures scattered around on the walls here, along with what look like little salt and pepper shakers of some kind of furry, multi-limbed creature on the counter. Hunk is stood in front of a bowl of what look like scrambled eggs, humming lightly. Lance reaches out and grabs Keith's elbow reflexively. Keith exhales in relief. Hunk actually looks almost exactly the same as before -- his hair is more or less the same length, only styled differently, and he looks a little bulkier than before, but his eyes are the same warm brown as before, barely showing any signs of aging. The biggest changes are two earring hoops in one ear and stubble that looks more deliberate than Lance's.

Hunk looks up at them and beams. "Morning, guys! There's fresh bread if you wanna make toast, and we've still got some of that jam stuff from Abrax-145 that you like, Lance."

"Morning, Hunk," Keith says cautiously. Lance lets go of him, letting out a small noise, and runs over to pick up the fresh loaf of bread off the counter immediately, raising it to his face and inhaling.

"Uh," Hunk says, squinting at him. "What are you doing, buddy?" Keith has to struggle not to cover his face with his hand. Lance sets the loaf down and smiles happily at Hunk, apparently fine with looking like a child. He picks up a knife off the counter and starts cutting slices of bread, spacing them evenly with ease.

"Just excited to eat, dude. We're hungry this morning." He grins brightly at Hunk; Keith can tell he's very pleased about having food that isn't goo. Hunk gags a little and holds up his hands, pretending to cover his ears.

"Don't, stop, I told you to never tell me anything about your sex life and I meant it," Hunk protests. Keith feels his face turn pink, and is only slightly gratified by Lance going completely scarlet.

"No, I didn't mean -- I'm just excited to eat -- _bread_ , this looks like good bread," Lance stutters, turning his back to them to mess with the device that mostly looks like a toaster, but features far more buttons and slots than usual. The tips of his ears are still flushed; Keith has to tear his eyes away from them when Hunk clears his throat and gestures for Keith to get some food.

"Allura and Shiro have already eaten, but they wanna talk later about that new planet we're heading to tomorrow. There's some kind of ceremony or speech or something, but I dunno if we'll need formal clothes. I hope not, I think I left my pants back on Loqui and I haven't been able to ask Coran where to find more," Hunk says, loading his own plate.

Keith looks up from the food on his plate in time to catch Lance's shoulders visibly drop in relief at the sound of the other team members names. He feels his own stomach twisting with a combination of reassurance and worry -- Shiro may still be alive, but one year was enough to completely change him. Keith wonders what his brother is like after ten years of fighting the beings who changed his life forever, almost afraid to find out when he’s still rediscovering him in the past. But at least he's alive -- at least they're all alive, somehow.

"I guess we'll find out," Lance says, dropping a huge stack of toast on the table in front of Keith and making grabby hands at the coffee Hunk passes to him. He takes a long, slow sip, sighing with pleasure as he lowers it to the table. Hunk snorts and grabs a piece of toast, spreading what looks like butter on it.

Over the course of breakfast, it seems to come easy for Lance to just drop himself into his future self's place, making conversation and stealing bites of food off of Keith's plate even though he can just get his own. Hunk doesn't seem to notice any difference. Keith isn't sure what to say, isn't sure who he might be in the future. He's never really thought about who he might be in ten years. He only just started considering that he really have one when they’d joined Voltron.

"You okay, Keith?" Hunk asks, and Keith jerks guiltily and starts eating. The food tastes delicious, as most of Hunk's creations do, but also just like it came from Earth, so either Hunk and Pidge have improved Altean technology, or they've made it back home somehow. Keith realizes that he and Lance have a lot to learn about what's going on, about what they’re doing as Voltron. They need to see if they can find out about anything relating to the aliens who sent them here, to try and find a way of going back.

Breakfast passes relatively quickly, only interrupted by Pidge filtering in to grab a bagel and then leaving wordlessly, still yawning. They all jolt briefly at a loud banging noise that starts up, echoing down the halls, but Hunk relaxes immediately, so Keith just exchanges a surprised look with Lance and doesn't say anything.

After they clean up, Lance hovers next to Keith, reaching up to pull at his sleeve. "We're gonna, uh, just check something out before the meeting, just, you know--"

"I don't want to _know,_ " Hunk says loudly, and Keith pulls Lance from the room before they both start getting flustered all over again.

"What the hell, Lance," Keith whispers hotly, walking quickly towards the control room, where hopefully they still store all of their universal information. Lance makes an indignant squawking noise, somehow almost tripping over his feet. Keith abruptly realizes that Lance is several inches taller than him now, annoyingly enough.

"It's not my fault that Hunk has a dirty mind," Lance argues. "I didn't say _anything_ weird but he was all--"

"Whatever," Keith interrupts.

"I wasn't _doing anything,_ " Lance hisses, still blushing. Keith, despite himself, feels his mouth start to curve at the corners at his petulant expression, but faces forward and walks so Lance won't see.

The control room is empty, more or less exactly the same as it was ten years ago -- the castle existed for ten thousand years in the same shape, so Keith isn't surprised to see that there are only a few cosmetic changes to the room. Everything operates just as they remember, although the translation technology seems much smoother than the one Pidge in the past had them using.

Searching for information takes a minute, as neither of them remember the name of the planet, but they finally get a hit on Klessia's name -- stating that the planet, Brakya, has been part of the Voltron Alliance for ten years, that their planet supplies ships and intelligence for the resistance, and that they are unreachable through regular communications due to the nature of their society. _The Brakyans have control of mental connections and exhibits psychic abilities?_ the notes under her name say, which is unhelpful but apparently very accurate.

"We should look up ourselves," Lance says, when it becomes clear that they have exactly nothing to go off of. "Just to figure out some basics, we've gotta be in the system, right? We don't even know how long we've been married."

Keith can't help but glance at the ring on his finger, and then at the one on Lance's -- they're both shiny, but they show signs of wear on them. They look lived in, used, cherished; as he's watching, Lance absently rubs his finger over the band as they wait for the search results to load.

_Keith Kogane-McClain_ pops up first. Seeing it makes Keith's heart jolt in his chest. His age and date of birth and physical description all list underneath, but Keith can't tear his eyes away from the sight of his name, paired with Lance's name, sitting so matter-of-factly at the top of screen. It stirs something in him that he's been trying desperately to ignore.

"Spouse, Lance McClain-Kogane, yes, yes, where's the marriage date," Lance mutters to himself, apparently unfazed. Keith swallows and bends closer to read through his biography, which includes titles bestowed upon him from the planets they've saved, as well as his place of birth and designation aboard the Castle of Lions. Lance's name sits starkly next to the word _Spouse._

"We've been married for three years in August," Keith says, pointing a finger at the biography section. "We were married -- on Earth, it looks like. In Varadero."

Lance goes totally still next to Keith, and then lets out a little burst of breathless laughter. It sounds choked, like it's ripping out of Lance without his permission. "On -- on Earth. At home. We got married with my family there," he says. His voice is tight but when Keith glances at him, his eyes aren't teary -- they're bright, almost glowing. "We do make it home," Lance says.

"It looks like it," Keith says. Something deep in him thrills at the expression on Lance's face, but Keith tamps down on that ruthlessly. "Is there anything else?"

The information is sparse regarding other personal lifetime events, and Lance's bio is similarly worded.

"Shit," Keith mutters. They don't know anything more about what they're doing in the future, they don't have any way to reach the Brakyans _,_ and the planet is at least four days travel from where they are currently. "What are we supposed to do now?"

"Keep playing along?" Lance suggests. He closes out of the searches and shuts down the console. "I mean, Klessia sent us here to show us that we -- we eventually get along, I guess, which is pretty evident if we're married, so now we just wait until she pulls us back?"

"I don't like that plan," Keith says flatly. "We don't know that that's what's going to happen. We could be stuck here indefinitely. What about where our future selves are right now -- did they get pulled back to our bodies?"

Lance's brow furrows. "I don't know, okay, but I'm going to trust that we can trust Klessia -- we still bring them into the alliance, Keith. We're still working with them ten years into the future. It's going to be okay."

"We can't even trust that this _is_ the future," Keith argues. "This could all be some fantasy that they've put into our minds just to prove some point -- why are you blindly believing everything just because someone tells you it's true? Isn't that what got you into trouble with Nyma?" The words come out sharper than he means, and Lance recoils. Keith regrets saying it immediately, but he can't take it back, and besides, it's _true_.

Lance colors and scowls at Keith, fists clenching -- he shifts imperceptibly away from Keith, but it suddenly feels like he's moved across the room. "Just because you're some secretive, untrusting loner doesn't mean that everyone has to live that way. People aren't always going to hurt you, you know, so why don't you just--"

"Wow, reliving your youth?"

They spin around to see Shiro standing in the doorway to the control room, smiling at them. Keith's throat closes at the sight of him, nearly staggering under the mixture of relief and worry that's lingered inside him ever since Shiro fell back to Earth; the immeasurable relief that Shiro had come back after everyone else had given up on him, and the uncontrollable worry that he would lose his brother again without warning, that nothing would be able to reverse it this time. Keith leans back against the console and tries to smile.

Shiro looks -- tired, is the kindest word Keith can think of. His hair is more gray than black, and that bright shock of white seems to have grown a little bit, but he's still standing tall and strong. His face is older, more lined, even more so than everyone else's. He'll be thirty five this year, Keith realizes. He's more or less the same otherwise, except his prosthetic arm has either been replaced or modified -- bits of it glow bright blue, and there are strange symbols marked all over it.

"What do you mean?" he asks, hoping he sounds normal, and Shiro laughs a little.

"The bickering. Been a while since I've seen you two so heated. What's up?" he asks, walking closer. Lance tenses next to him and then deliberately relaxes himself, so obviously trying to pull himself together that even Keith can tell. He's still surprised when Lance wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him closer. Their hips bump sharply, and when Keith automatically tries to pull away Lance tightens his grip holds firmly.

"Just debating whether or not to -- to switch our shampoo brand," Lance says. "A silly argument. Between husbands. Which, you know, we are."

Keith is going to kill him, probably.

Shiro looks questioningly at Keith, who shrugs helplessly, and rolls his eyes. "Okay," Shiro says slowly, "I just came to tell you that we're getting ready to meet in the planning room. We should head down to Tholi tomorrow morning, but she wants to go over everything that we'll be doing."

"Cool," Lance says. "Give us a minute? I've got a great closing argument." He winks, and Shiro makes a vaguely disgusted face but thankfully doesn't say anything.

"Okay," he says, backing out of the room, "You've got five minutes, but if you're late again, Allura _is_ going to chase you down again, and you remember what that was like last time." He raises his eyebrows at them meaningfully; Keith does not want to know what happened, except that he's probably going to find out anyway, given enough time. Fuck, he hates this time travel shit.

"Roger," Lance says, saluting, waiting until the doors close to let go of Keith and step away from him. Keith tries not to feel hurt, suddenly cold all along his right side.

"Shampoo?" he asks, and Lance is quiet for a moment before he quirks his mouth wryly.

"My parents argued about stuff like that. Little things like brands or where he put his shoes or her leaving her hairbrush on the counter. It was the first thing I thought of." His voice is subdued again, none of the heat of their argument lingering. He looks tired all of a sudden, even more tired than Shiro had.

"Oh," Keith says. He doesn't know what else to say.

"Listen," Lance says, crossing his arms and sighing. "I don't know what we should do -- I don't know if we can trust Klessia. But it doesn't hurt us to go along with the assumption that she doesn’t mean us harm for now, and I think that's what we should do. We agreed to keep it a secret for now, but let's say at the end of the week, if we're still here, we talk to Shiro or Allura about it and see what we can find out. Whether this is real, or some dream, or whatever, let's at least -- let's try not to mess anything up."

Keith swallows hard, feeling somehow guilty at how quiet Lance is, at the total change between the Lance he'd presented to Shiro -- the flirty, cheerful Lance -- and the Lance he's seeing now. He wonders how often Lance does this, how many secrets and feelings he keeps held under his tongue.

"Alright," he says finally, and Lance uncrosses his arms and gives Keith a tentative smile. Keith returns it, but it still feels like there are miles between them instead of a few feet. They're meant to be married, but Keith has never felt more unsure about his relationship with Lance before. This time, when they start walking down the hallway, Lance doesn't grab his arm, and Keith tries not to read into it.

A week -- they can do this for a week.

 

* * *

 

It's not surprising at all that Allura and Coran look exactly the same, since Alteans have longer lifespans than humans. Allura's hair is cut shorter, and Coran's hair is maybe a little lighter in color, but otherwise they're exactly as they were when they came out of the cryo pods.

What _is_ surprising is learning that Zarkon is dead.

"The Tholians want us to be a part of the ceremony celebrating the fall of Zarkon," Allura says, frowning thoughtfully at the holographic display of the planet. It spins in place, orbited by five small moons. Keith is so caught up in the bright orange of the water that he almost misses what she says, but it's hard to ignore Lance sucking in a huge breath and then choking on it.

"You okay, dude?" Hunk asks. Keith's mind is reeling somewhat, but he makes himself gingerly reach out and pat Lance on the back as he coughs.

"Fine," Lance wheezes, raising a hand and flapping it at her, "Just inhaled wrong. Keep going, Allura."

Allura raises an eyebrow but continues. "They have a parade planned, no jokes please Lance, as well as a formal dinner tomorrow evening for their parliament members to attend and meet with us. They're very eager to join the Alliance and might have some information on Haggar's location, so everyone should be on their best behavior, but it should be a simple trip."

"I hope we don't have to sit through another reenactment," Pidge sighs, leaning back in their seat with a sigh. "No one ever gets it right, except for Allura stabbing him through the chest."

"That _is_ kind of the iconic moment, to be fair," Hunk says reasonably. Lance glances sideways at Keith with wide eyes and mouths, _Oh my god_ at him. Keith shrugs helplessly. "It's hard to show off all the behind the scenes stuff," Hunk continues. "Like when Lance and Keith totally took out that whole security force with that bomb thing."

Lance jumps a little as they all turn to look at the two of them, brows raised. "Uh, yeah," Lance says, stilted. "We definitely -- did do that. But Allura's thing is way cooler," he says hastily, waving a hand. "It makes sense that they'd talk about that." Keith nods, but catches Shiro giving them both a strange look -- he smiles at him, trying to look convincingly like he knows what the hell is happening right now, but Shiro just narrows his eyes and then looks back at Allura.

"True," Pidge says.

Allura cuts a hand through the air to end the conversation, although the corner of her mouth is twitching. "We will attend whatever ceremonies or reenactments or parties they deem necessary, because we are the leaders of the Alliance and these are potential allies and friends. Now, you may spend the rest of the day as you please, but be prepared to depart first thing in the morning. That means _first_ thing, Pidge, Keith."

"Yeah, yeah," Pidge grumbles, pushing away from the chair to stand up. Keith realizes that they've grown taller than he'd thought when he just saw them sitting down -- they're probably of a height with him now. "I'm going to go work on Spike, his diagnostics were on the fritz. See ya!"

"I'm gonna go check on Yellow. Coran, you were coming with me, right?" Hunk tugs once at one of the earrings in his ear before he gets up,  gathering up his bayard and his tablet.

"Yes, yes, we'll get her up and running in no time!" Coran says cheerfully, saluting as he follows Hunk out of the room.

Allura and Shiro trade a look that Keith can't interpret, but which sends his brother senses into overdrive. Shiro smiles at her and then says, "We're going to go catch Matt, he's due back from that exploratory mission today. Allura wants to check his progress."

_Matt?_ Keith thinks, startled. As in Pidge's brother Matt? Lance, for his part, doesn't react at all, just nods his head and says, "Keith and I are gonna just chill today, I think. Catch up. You know how it is."

Allura gives them a look that makes Keith flush, but doesn't comment. "Have fun," she says, waving as she and Shiro head out of the room.

Keith and Lance sit in shocked silence for a moment, and then Lance says, blowing out a gust of air, "We have _so much_ catching up to do." He starts chewing on his thumbnail absently, brow furrowed. Keith reaches out and touches the back of his neck without thinking, an automatic remembered motion, but Lance melts into the touch just as quickly, like it's just as familiar to him. His skin is warm to the touch, and it makes Keith think of Lance pressed up behind him in bed again.

"We'll figure it out," Keith says, squeezing briefly before he lets go. Lance looks up at him and the corners of his mouth curve up in a soft smile. It's a familiar expression, but it's not usually aimed at him. He stands up abruptly. Lance looks surprised.

"We should -- try to figure out what happened with Zarkon, if we have to celebrate his death tomorrow," Keith stammers. "But I should -- I kind of want to train for a bit, if that's okay?"

"Oh," Lance says, brow furrowing. "I mean. I guess. I'll go see what I can find out about the final battle or whatever." He suddenly snickers. "Final battle. Holy shit. We skipped the big boss fight."

Keith stares at him and then laughs a little as well; it feels a little hysterical around the edges, but only a little. "Is it weird that I'm okay with that?"

"No, I get you. I mean, I wished we'd seen Allura shank Zarkon and all, but apparently we handled a bomb and that sounds terrifying to me. You know how bad we are with timing," Lance says, making a face.

Keith snorts. "Yeah, us and time seem to have a bit of an issue."

Lance lets out a burst of laughter, covering his mouth when Keith turns to stare at him. "I'm sorry," he giggles. "You just -- you're making jokes. We're married. Ten years in the future. This is a lot to process in one day."

There's a little divot in his cheek, right below a spray of freckles. Keith has never really noticed it before. He tears his eyes away from Lance, quirking his mouth a little, and says, "Agreed. Let me know what you find."

"Will do, honeybun," Lance says, saluting him. Keith ignores the squirm that sets off in his stomach, and heads to the training deck to fight things until he doesn't have the energy to think about anything anymore, and especially not the ring resting easily on his finger.

 

* * *

 

The training simulator in the future must have had some upgrades, Keith realizes. Either that or he's more distracted than he thought. After getting thrown to the ground for the fifth session in a row, he gives in and lowers the difficulty of the Gladiator a few levels. His goal was to wear himself out, not to just bruise every bone in his body.

He settles into a familiar pace, dodging and weaving and clashing with the robot, avoiding obvious feints and trying to predict its patterns. It's easy to settle himself into the movements, to let go of his thoughts for a little while, except to remember to parry, swing, block, jump -- for a long time, he just lets himself fight. He only stops when he's struggling to suck in a breath, when the sweat has soaked through the back of his shirt and he's having a hard time gripping his bayard.

He feels better, even though he hasn't accomplished anything other than tiring his body out. He cancels the simulation and wipes down his sweaty face with a towel, running it over the back of his neck and into the hollows of his throat. He's wondering if he should shower here or if it would be weird to shower in his shared room with Lance when he hears someone clearing their throat.

Lance stands in the entry to the room, lounging against the wall. He's got the tablet in one hand and a water bottle in the other, and he shakes the water at Keith with a small smile on his face.

"You've been here for like, three hours. I thought maybe you snuck onto an escape pod and you were trying to fly your way to Brakya. Don't do that," he adds hastily. "The escape pods aren't built for prolonged deep space travel, you'll die."

"I'm aware, Lance," Keith says, walking over and accepting the water. "We took the same courses at the Garrison."

"Oh, pardon me," Lance says, rolling his eyes. "I forgot the drop out already knew everything there was to know about space travel."

Keith kind of wants to keep arguing, but his throat is dry and he's still pleasantly winded, the endorphins from working out surging through his body. He takes a long drink of water, tipping his head back and swallowing until it's half gone, and then sighs.

"Did you find anything out?" he asks. There's a brief silence, and when he glances up, Lance is looking at him slightly wide-eyed. When Keith raises an eyebrow, he clears his throat and coughs.

"Um, yeah, kind of. Nothing really specific, apparently we didn't come home and journal about everything we did, but Pidge kept a log of our planned attack and it seems things went off pretty smoothly. So we started out flying out to this secret base near--"

"Can I get the footnotes?" Keith asks, wiping at a stray bead of sweat running down the side of his throat. "I kind of need to shower."

Lance looks at the towel and clears his throat again. "Sure. Uh." He taps his fingers against his mouth for a moment, thinking. "Basically we used our Alliance and connections to launch a multi-pronged attack against his base, and we caught him off guard. I think he knew we'd been working with other people, but he didn't know just how many there were in the rebellion? So we as Voltron started off by wrecking the shit out of his armada, and then everyone else came in and distracted him long enough for Allura to get in and find him directly. Pidge and Hunk handled hacking and coordinating attacks. The two of us set off bombs and separated the base's security from the throne room. Shiro escorted Allura to Zarkon, to make sure she got there. I don't have audio logs but I'm assuming there was some monologuing on both Allura's and Zarkon's parts, and hopefully it was fittingly dramatic." Lance sucks in a deep breath, and Keith uses the towel to cover his smile. Lance continues, oblivious to his amusement, "They fight, she stabs him through the chest, Haggar escaped and took a bunch of druid tech stuff with her, so she's still at large. Obviously the empire is big enough we're still dealing with the rest of the Galra army, but for the most part we're on the other side of it, now, I think. The war, I mean. Hunting down Haggar seems to be our biggest priority." 

"Huh," Keith says. "Okay. Was there anything else?" _Like about our marriage, or what led up to it,_ he thinks, but he doesn't know how to say it. He's halfway scared to ask.

"Not really," Lance says. "Like I said, we didn't exactly transcribe the whole event. I went through everything in the computer about it and then I realized how much time had passed and realized you were either way too into your training or you'd made a break for it."

Keith squints at the tablet. "What time is it?"

"Almost dinner, pumpkin," Lance says, turning the screen so he can see it reading 18:16. "Better hurry up and wash up."

"Don't call me that," Keith says, heading for the showers attached to the training deck. His ears feel hot, but he can probably blame that on exercise.

"Cupcake? Bunny? Dearest?" Lance suggests. "There's zero chances that I, Lance McClain, don't use cutesy nicknames for my husband. You should get used to it if we want to make sure to blend in." He smirks at Keith, who scowls at him and walks into the showers without replying.

"I'll see you at dinner, sunshine!" Lance calls after him.

 

* * *

 

 They manage to make it through dinner without anyone noticing anything, although Shiro gives them a strange look when they almost sit in the wrong chairs. Matt is there, and sits at the far end of the table next to Shiro, Allura, and Coran, where they all talk excitedly over some exploratory mission to an uninhabited planet that he'd been on recently.

"The plant life is probably really similar to early Earth's organisms, the oxygen levels were through the roof!" he says, waving his hands around, gesturing wildly. Shiro laughs at him and motions towards the untouched food on his plate.

"Eat some real food, you've been living off goo for the last few weeks," he says. Matt rolls his eyes, but just shoves several bites into his mouth and continues talking. Allura is making notes and asking questions, tapping at away at her own tablet, eyes bright with curiosity.

"Apparently," Lance whispers in his ear -- Keith jolts, unaware of how intently he'd been focused on the four of them, "They're all working on finding hospitable planets for refugees of the war. Matt's leading the research." His breath is warm against Keith's cheek, and he hurriedly shoves food into his own mouth to cover up his flush.

"You guys ready for tomorrow?" Hunk asks. "I hope we get to ride in something cool for the parade. Hey, which would you rather ride again, the robot chariots from that one planet, or those bird things that were like giant ostriches from Lunaria?"

"Robot chariots," Keith decides, as Lance replies, "Giant ostriches," at the same time. They look at each other incredulously. "A bird isn't as easy to control," Keith says. "Plus it's a bird."

"You fly the Red Lion," Lance retorts. "You already pilot something that isn't easy to control. Also, yeah, it's a _giant bird_ , that sounds amazing -- uh, it was amazing, I mean."

"Even though that one bird tried to eat your hair?" Pidge asks, propping their head up with one hand. They smirk a little. "I think we've still got video of that."

"I'm sure it was just excited," Lance replies. "Also, I hate you."

"I think I've got to agree with Keith on this one, buddy," Hunk says thoughtfully. "The giant birds were really cool, but they're unpredictable, and I'm not a zoologist. I prefer to be trapped on top of something I can probably handle if it goes haywire."

"I liked the giant birds," Pidge says, shrugging their shoulders. "I think with some modifications I could've gotten mine to fly."

"Of course you liked the birds, you're probably cousins," Lance says smugly. Pidge gives him a blank look, and he elaborates, "Pidge. Pigeon. You're a bird. Come on, keep up, you're a genius."

"Keith, has your husband been drinking tonight?" Pidge asks, laughing. The words fall off their lips so naturally, it almost takes Keith a second to register, but when they do he flushes, looking sideways at Lance. Lance is still grinning, apparently unaffected, so Keith forcefully curves his lips into a smile.

"I think he's just like that, Pidge," he says. His mind is still stuck on _your husband, your husband, your husband_. He hopes they all can't tell, but he especially hopes that Lance is unaware of how rattled he is. Lance has called him 'husband' a few times, but it's been Lance making a _joke_ . This is someone who thinks -- _knows_ they really are married. In the time and place they're currently in, he and Lance are actually _married_. His ring suddenly sits heavy on his finger.

"Everyone, you should get some rest," Allura says from the head of the table. She stands up, tablet in one hand, while Shiro and Matt stand behind her, still talking. Coran is clearing away the last few dishes from the table. "We have the parade bright and early -- sunrises on Tholi are apparently not to be missed."

"Pidge," Coran says, pointing a fork at them, "That means getting actual sleep tonight. We'll be planetside all day, you won't have time to sneak off and nap."

"They'll sleep," Matt says. "Otherwise I won't give them my present from that unclassified planet."

"Bribery?" Pidge scoffs. "I'm twenty-four, Matt."

Matt raises an eyebrow and Pidge stares back unwaveringly for almost thirty seconds, and then makes an annoyed sound.

"Fine, but it better be incredible. Like, a mushroom the size of my entire body. That can shoot poison." They gather their things and stand up.

"Who knows," Matt says. "You'll have to get a solid eight hours to find out."

Pidge rolls their eyes but obligingly leaves, and Shiro turns to Matt with a grin.

"I wish something like that would work with Keith," he says, shooting Keith a look. Keith just makes a face at him, but Lance laughs.

"You could always bribe him with more weapons or something," Lance offers, smirking.

"Nah," Shiro says, waving a hand. Allura starts to leave, muttering to herself, with Matt and Shiro trailing after her. "Keith's only ever really wanted one thing," Shiro calls out before he leaves the room. Lance and Hunk both turn to look at Keith with matching grins, and Keith buries his face in his hands, silently cursing Shiro.

"Wanted what?" Hunk asks. Lance tilts his head, and Keith knows, he knows what the answer is -- he knows it's something that the real Keith, the Keith who belongs here, might be able to say. But with Lance watching expectantly, the only thing he can do is shrug his shoulders.

"To be a pilot," he lies, even though he knows it's partly true as well. It's just not what Shiro is talking about. "To explore space and fly."

"Oh," Hunk says. "That's really cool, dude. I always wanted to do like, five different things when I was younger. Veterinarian, world renowned chef, superhero...I had some big dreams." He sighs nostalgically. Everyone else has completely cleared out by now, and Keith stands up, trying to hurry the conversation along so he can leave it behind.  Lance and Hunk follow suit.

"I always wanted to fly too," Lance says quietly, pushing his chair back up to the table. "To get out and touch the stars -- when I was a kid I thought I'd be able to take one home to my family, just grab it and put it in my bag and give it to them, like, look what I found." There's a longing in his voice that makes Keith's throat dry. Even though Lance _is_ a pilot, there's a desire ringing in his voice that says he still wants _more_ , that it's not enough, that he'll never have enough.

Keith closes his eyes and swallows and says, "We should go to bed, too."

"See you guys in the morning," Hunk says, tugging one of his earrings as he goes. He turns left to go down a different hallways, and waves before he turns the corner.

The walk back to the room is quiet. When Keith glances at Lance, he's absently chewing on his lower lip, deep in thought. Keith doesn't know what to say. Part of him hopes that when they go to sleep, they'll wake up in their proper bodies, that a single day of this was enough for Klessia to make whatever point she was hoping to make.

They dress for bed and brush their teeth, bumping in the bathroom with muttered apologies. There's clearly a side for each of them on the counter, different bottles of lotion and gels and scrubs organized neatly on one side, while Keith's is sparse but messy with shaving cream and a couple of different kinds of soaps. He washes his face, copying Lance's movements, and then they turn as one to face their bed.

"It's fine," Lance says abruptly. "I mean. We're just sleeping."

"Yeah," Keith says. His stomach is twisting faintly. "Sleeping is -- normal."

"Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious," Lance says, but his voice is teasing. He pulls down the covers and crawls into bed on the side he woke up on, leaving Keith to gingerly settle on the other side. Lance is wearing a shirt tonight, but he remembers all over again the warmth of his skin against Keith's back, the heavy weight of his arm around his waist.

"Stop thinking and go to sleep," Lance murmurs. The lights dim on their own as Keith settles against the pillows, laying with his back to Lance. In the dark, he can hear him breathing in and out, slower and slower. Keith focuses on the sound, on the feeling of Lance shifting slightly in his sleep, on the pounding of his own heart in his chest.

After a very long time, he finally manages to fall asleep.

 

* * *

 

Keith wakes up with his face pressed against something warm. There's something resting against his hip, and he can hear someone snoring softly; he quickly realizes he's still in bed with Lance. He keeps his eyes closed for a moment, breathing in and out, trying to settle into the sensation of disappointment. If going to sleep hadn't reset them, he's honestly not sure _what_ will fix this whole thing. He clenches his fists, then lets them go and leans his head back, squinting at the automatic lights that have come on.

He's pressed up against Lance's chest; he'd been sleeping with his face against Lance's throat, and the weight on his hip was Lance's hand. Lance continues to sleep peacefully, face slack and brows smooth. Keith feels an overwhelming urge to smooth his thumb over Lance's lower lip on his open mouth, and forcefully turns himself over and out of Lance's grasp, sitting up in bed.

A glance at the tablet on the nightstand tells him it's 5:00. They're meant to meet the rest of the crew at 5:30. Lance doesn't show any signs of waking up, so Keith gingerly reaches over and prods him in the shoulder. He doesn't wake up, just shifts onto his back and sprawls out a little. His nose wrinkles and Keith sighs.

"Lance. Get up. Lance." He pokes his shoulder again, harder, until finally Lance's eyes flutter open. He yawns widely and then frowns, sitting up in bed.

"Oh," Lance says, resigned. "We're--"

"Yeah, we're still here," Keith says shortly. "We gotta get ready to meet the others for the parade."

"Right," Lance says, staring up at Keith. "Right, we've got -- you have lines on your face, you know." He reaches up and brushes his fingertips over Keith's cheek, and Keith pulls away sharply and stands up.

"You have drool on your chin," he says, which is true, and hurries to the bathroom as Lance winces and rubs at his face with a fist.

Alone in the bathroom, Keith stares at himself in the mirror. He's still not used to this face yet, this Keith who looks like he should have his life in order. The Keith who probably does. The Keith who somehow managed to convince _Lance_ to marry him.

"Fuck," Keith mutters, and starts to brush his teeth.

 

* * *

 

Sunrises on Tholi really are amazing. The parade is in a city by the bright orange ocean, so the sun coming up sets off a spray of colors that reflect brightly into the sky -- reds and oranges and pinks and purples, with the slightest hint of blue around the edges. The entire parade waits in breathless silence until the sun is over the horizon and then bursts into cheers, beginning the procession that winds its way through the coastal city, following a rocky paved road. The Tholians are short, only about five feet tall at their highest, rounded creatures, with four tentacle-like arms and huge eyes. Their skin is a soft shade of purple that Hunk tells him is "lilac," and they have pale and pointed ears. They gesture politely at the paladins and bow deeply to Allura.

"Everyone make way for the heroes of Voltron!" the Tholian ambassador cheers, and they follow a parade of Tholians atop flowered carts and astride giant fuzzy animals that resemble moose. The crew themselves have been seated on top of a cart being pulled along by two of the creatures, and they all smile and wave down at the people who shout hellos and excitedly wave back. Keith tries to hide behind Hunk, who's sitting next to him, but Lance reaches back and pulls him out, pointing down into the crowds -- there are children waving banners of all different colors, and a huge cluster of them where Lance is pointing have red ones. They scream in delight when Keith awkwardly waggles his fingers at them, and Lance laughs in his ear. Everyone is in a good mood despite the early hour, even Pidge, who charges up their bayard for the crowd and lets loose a shock of sparks that make the Tholians wave their tentacles in the air.

The parade winds its way along the side of the ocean, eventually sloping up a hill towards the capitol of the city. The architecture is a mixture of rustic, like the city below, and futuristic. The rock pillars give way to sleek white and gold walls, and the entire curved roof is a mix of metal and glass. According to Allura's debriefing, the planet of Tholi houses only three major distinct populations, and this city serves the largest of them, and also contains the planet's governing body. It looks fancier than anything Keith has seen so far in space, but Hunk just looks up at it and sighs a little desolately.

"Formal clothes," he mutters.

Right now they're all in their armor, but Coran had assured them that their fancier clothing would be sent to the capitol before the formal dinner began; Keith is already ready for the day to be over, but Lance looks excited, peering around at the crowds as they enter the capitol, beaming at all of the blue banners fluttering in the breeze.

"Can you believe all those people already know about us?" he whispers to Keith, who watches as the doors to the building close on the last cheers and shouts. He shrugs helplessly at Lance, unsure how to feel about all of the people who looked up at them as if they were heroes, as if they were _important_. It's strange to receive adulation for something he hasn't personally done. It is -- gratifying, he supposes, to know that they've affected this many people, that they've made beings like the Tholians feel safer.

"Paladins," Allura says to them once everyone has settled, "You'll be allowed to explore the capitol while Shiro and I discuss the Alliance with the ambassador. The markets will open in a few hours if you would like for one of the guides to take you. Coran will be with you should you require money." She pauses and then smiles at them. "Enjoy yourselves, everyone. We'll see you tonight."

Shiro squeezes Keith's shoulder as he passes, grinning. "Maybe you'll find something for your anniversary on this planet, huh? Anything's gotta be better than that plant last year, right?" Keith blinks at him and tries to figure out how he should respond to that but Shiro is already following Allura and several of the Tholians into a room behind a huge white and silver door.

"That was some parade, huh?" Hunk says cheerfully, following behind Pidge as they start off quickly down the hallways. Coran and Keith and Lance trade a look and fall into step behind the youngest paladin. The halls echo with their footsteps as they walk, pausing every now and then when they stop to look up at the intricate designs on the walls and the sculptures that dot their path.

"It was pretty cool," Lance agrees. "I liked all the banners, it was like a rainbow out there."

"Reminded me of your wedding," Hunk says, bending closer to a perfectly round black sphere and squinting at it. Lance and Keith both glance at each other and then look away sharply.

"How so?" Lance asks casually, pretending to be very interested in a painting of a Tholian with shockingly pink clothing. Keith hovers nearby, staring intently over Pidge's shoulder at a painting of a large field of purple plants that resemble cacti. Pidge sends him a curious look and then continues walking, muttering to Coran about wishing the market was already open. Keith tries to act like he's not listening as hard as he can to Lance and Hunk's conversation.

"Oh, the banners and stuff, all the colors. All that was missing was your mom crying her eyes out, to be honest," Hunk says, grinning sideways at Lance. Lance's face doesn't really change, but there's something warmer in his eyes. Keith can feel it in his stomach all the way across the hall. "Man, that was some wedding. I was doing really well, but then Allura choked up while Keith was giving his vows, and you know I'm a sympathetic crier, dude."

"You cry at everything, Hunk," Lance says, lightly punching his shoulder. His mouth is curved but Keith can't tell what he's really thinking, what his half-smile and his warm eyes mean.

"Okay, fair," Hunk concedes. They continue walking quietly for some time, Keith and Lance avoiding each other's eyes. Every time someone reminds him that they're really, _really_ married, Keith feels a painful swooping in his gut, like he's missed a step walking down the stairs, like he's cresting a parabola while flying and then tipping back down; it's at once nauseating and a little giddy.

A Tholian comes and gives them a brief history of the city and the other three populations that inhabit the planet, and they finish exploring the capitol building just in time for the guide, Ulia, to offer to take them to the markets.

"Yes, please," Pidge says excitedly. "You guys have some really cool stuff and I'm improving my robot right now," they say, pulling out their tablet. "Coran, can you come with me?"

"Of course, Pidge," Coran says, pulling out a communicator. "If you three need anything, just let us know."

Keith takes the communicator and looks up in time to see Hunk whispering something to Lance, whose face does something complicated before he says, "Of course!" He smiles reassuringly at Hunk, who gives him a look but shrugs. Lance locks eyes with Keith and walks over, leaning in to murmur in his ear, "He wanted to know if we were okay because apparently we're acting weird by not _holding hands_ , which is something we do _all the time_ according to him."

"What?" Keith says confusedly, but Lance just makes a frustrated noise and grabs hold of his hand, intertwining their fingers. Lance's hand is pleasantly warm, but Keith's feels cold and clammy, and he tries to pull away instinctively. Lance tightens his grip and whispers, "We're _married_ Keith, come on."

Keith forces himself to loosen his arm and let it swing between them, following Hunk the others down to a carriage waiting to take them to the market. Hunk looks back at them and smiles brightly, and Lance grins back. Keith tries to do the same, but all he can really focus on is the way Lance's fingers, long and thin, grip between his own. Keith has never held anyone's hand before, except maybe his mother's or Shiro's when he was younger. Keith's wedding ring is rubbing against Lance's pinky.

The ride to the market is mostly quiet, Ulia pleasantly narrating the history of the buildings they pass as they go, Pidge and Hunk listening curiously, Coran taking quiet notes on a tablet. Keith and Lance continue to hold hands but don't look each other in the eye. When Keith glances tentatively to the side, Lance is staring out of the window with a furrowed brow. He sighs, and then firms his mouth and pulls Keith's hand into his lap. Keith stares down at the twist of their hands, the contrast of skin colors, the flash of his ring as the light from the windows falls across it. Lance squeezes his hand and Keith looks back up at him.

"What do you want to look for?" he asks Keith.

"What do you mean?" Keith asks, startled. Lance looks like he's preparing for a fight for some reason, and it's got Keith's guard up.

"I mean we should go -- look at stuff together. Like a couple. What are you interested in?" Lance glances at Hunk, who looks engrossed in whatever Ulia is saying. Pidge is looking at them out of the corner of their eye, but Keith avoids looking back.

"Um, books? Or weapons maybe -- I don't know, whatever they have, I'm not really -- what?" Keith asks, because Lance is looking at him strangely.

"Are the books in our room yours?" Lance asks. "I thought maybe they were mine, but some of them didn't look like my style. I didn't know you liked to read."

After nine months together in close quarters, that kind of hurts. Keith feels like he knows too much about Lance sometimes, like what his favorite lotion smells like, or what he prefers to wear when he's tired versus what he wants to wear when he's lounging, or how he likes to take his tea. But Keith has been doing his best to avoid being alone with Lance, and he does tend to read when he's on his own. It's probably not Lance's fault Keith hasn't exactly made his hobbies known. He still has to fight to keep from pulling away from Lance.

"I like to read," he replies shortly. Lance doesn't reply, just nods his head and looks back at where Ulia is using her tentacles to gesture wildly, explaining something historically significant. Keith doesn't quite care about what she's talking about, can't focus on anything other than his own body, the way he feels like he's hovering an inch outside of his skin. Why did he ever think that pretending to be married to Lance was going to be anything other than awful?

Lance's thumb begins to absently stroke over his  fingers, and Keith miserably resigns himself to a very long day.

 

* * *

 

Shopping actually goes better than Keith thought it would. He and Lance hold hands and wander around looking at things for a while, but when they meet up again, Pidge drags him away to a bookshop while Lance and Hunk look for mechanical gear with Coran, and Lance doesn't seem inclined to grab his hand again when they reunite, so Keith doesn't bring it up. They eat lunch with Ulia and then make their way back to the capitol, where they're informed they should begin getting ready for the formal dinner. Shiro and Allura have finished their discussion with the ambassador, and are waiting with Matt in the foyer.

"The Tholians have permitted Matt to have access to their information about uninhabited planets in the system," Allura says, clearly pleased. Matt is excitedly talking to Shiro, who has a warm look on his face as he listens. "The event will begin in an hour, so be ready to go as soon as possible. We'll toast our new partnership and celebrate for a few hours, then eat, then hopefully be back to the ship before the night goes on too long."

"Where's your party attitude, Allura?" Lance asks teasingly. "We should go all night, dancing until the sun comes up."

"Lance, you can do as you please. Some of us like to get a full night's rest," Allura says, shaking her head fondly. She taps Shiro on the shoulder and he turns to her swiftly. "I'm going to go get changed, I'll see you in a little while, alright?"

"Alright, princess," Shiro says, smiling softly. The moment between them holds, and Lance nudges Keith in the side. Keith nudges him back sharply. Coran coughs, and Allura goes a little pink and then nods to all of them, before walking away. Matt cheerfully salutes as Allura leaves the room, and she mimics him and sweeps out through the doorway, followed by Coran.

"Your clothes have been set out in rooms down this corridor," Shiro says, gesturing. "Keith and Lance, you're in the one on the left, Pidge is on the far right, Hunk is the first door on the right. Matt and I have to talk about some stuff, but we'll meet you outside the ballroom in forty-five minutes, okay? Forty-five. Seriously guys."

"Sure, sure," Pidge says, already walking towards their room. Hunk follows, leaving Keith and Lance to watch as Matt and Shiro bend their heads together and walk through the door Allura and Coran had gone through.

"What's up with that?" Lance asks Keith under his breath. "Is that a thing? Was that a thing in our time?"

"You mean Shiro and Allura?" Keith asks. "I have no idea." He'd had some idea that Shiro and Allura were tiptoeing around each other in their current time, but everything was still sort of new, and Shiro was -- still recovering. He hasn't thought about the possibility of his brother being in a relationship in a long time, much less one with an alien princess. Part of him feels obligated to tease Shiro for it, and part of him just wants Shiro to be happy. He's probably already teased Shiro, anyways, unless his older self is more mature than that.

"Hmm. Let's get this show on the road I guess," Lance says, reaching out to pull Keith along behind him. He doesn't thread their fingers, just wraps his hand around Keith's wrist, but Keith colors a little anyway.

In the room, there are formal clothing that resemble the Altean outfits Allura and Coran wear hanging on the wall across from a large mirror. One is embellished with red, and the other with blue, so at least they don't have to guess which one is theirs, but they prove somewhat difficult to put on. The buttons and zips are in the back, and there are several folds that Keith can't quite navigate -- he ends up half in, half out of his tunic, with his pants hanging open, annoyed and panting slightly. His hair is hanging in his face, but he can't reach his head to fix it.

"Oh my god," Lance says from across the room, amused. He's perfectly done up in his outfit, which seems impossible and irritates Keith even more. Lance moves to stand behind Keith, gently shifting the cloth until it falls easily over his shoulders, smoothing the creases down over his rib cage. His hands start fastening the ties behind Keith, working their way up his spine. Keith stares at himself in the mirror, at Lance behind him, watching his face as he concentrates on what he's doing. His face is more familiar than it was yesterday, all of the creases and lines and hard edges; he's not the same as seventeen year old Lance, but he's not a stranger anymore. The Keith he's pretending to be wakes up to this Lance every single day. He sucks in a deep breath; his chest feels like it's collapsing in on itself.

"There," Lance says, smiling at him in the mirror. Their eyes meet and hold for a long moment. Lance's eyes suddenly widen a little and he steps away from Keith, adjusting his own tunic. "Uh, we should go meet the others."

"Yeah," Keith says, trying not to sound desperate. Lance doesn't take his hand again.

 

* * *

 

The party begins with a toast, all of them holding glasses of a pale blue drink that fizzles as it goes down Keith's throat. It doesn't seem to have any adverse effects at first, but after about ten minutes, a warmth comes over him, spreading from his chest to his fingertips. It doesn't quite leave him tipsy, but it is enough to have him flushed, and everything glows a little brighter, including Lance's eyes. His blood pulses in time with the music that starts up after everyone's glasses have been drained.

"Come, Princess Allura," the ambassador is saying a few steps away, "I would be honored to share the first dance of the evening with you."

"It would be my pleasure," Allura says, smiling and tipping her head gracefully. She's in a floor length blueish gown, sparkling all over in the soft light as the sun sets. Her hair is loose and spilling over her shoulders, and it swings behind her in an arc as the ambassador takes her hands in her own and spins them gently onto the dance floor. Her laughter rings out across the room, and as if it were a signal, others begin to pull their own partners to dance.

"I'm glad this meeting went well," Coran says, watching Allura and the ambassador as they twirl around the outer edges of the dance floor. "I know she worries every time that something will go awry."

"She's an incredible leader," Shiro replies, watching her dance. "She wouldn't be Allura if she didn't want everything to go perfectly."

"I'm just glad we didn't have to do anything other than go on the guided tour and get to shop a little," Hunk says, pulling at the neck of his tunic. "I always hate doing demonstrations and stuff." They all watch the dancers for a while, waving at Allura when she smiles in their direction.

"Hey," Lance says suddenly, grabbing Keith's elbow. "We should dance."

Keith can't help but tense up. "Uh--" he starts to say, but Lance is already pulling him out onto the dance floor, locking their hands together and settling another one at his waist. Keith automatically mirrors him, and then Lance is spinning them around in a poor mimicry of the other dancers.

"What are you doing?" Keith asks, narrowly avoiding stepping on one of Lance's feet. Lance does a quick shuffle and then glances down, adjusting his own footing. They're awkwardly stepping around one another rather than properly dancing, but they are moving with the other dancers around the floor.

"You keep forgetting that we probably do this stuff all the time," Lance replies, readjusting his grip on Keith's hand. Keith's palm is sweaty, and he's still warm all over from the drink, and Lance is too, it seems -- there's a pink blush across the bridge of his nose and the tops of his ears. "We're trying to blend in, here, dude."

"Right," Keith says. This close, he can smell Lance's shampoo, something sweet and soft, almost like vanilla. Lance's left hand is cupping his right one, so that he can see the red gem flashing in the dim lighting as they spin around. Everything has the fuzzy glow of a dream, except the anxious twisting of Keith's stomach refuses to let him think that it really is one.

"I hope future you is more on top of this whole romance thing, because so far I'm the only one initiating," Lance says. He sounds teasing, but Keith looks up at his eyes to be sure, and is startled all over again by how close they are right now. If Keith leaned forward only a little, he could kiss Lance on the mouth.

He has no idea what his future self might be like romantically. He's never had a relationship with anyone before, never kissed anyone besides another Garrison pilot during a secret party the whole first year had thrown in one of the training rooms. He'd been trying desperately to get someone else out of his mind, had lunged and bumped their foreheads and it had resulted in a slightly damp, very awkward first kiss in the shadowy corners of the room, hidden behind a punching bag. The guy had smiled crookedly at him and said, "I thought you liked that one cargo pilot," and Keith had shoved him roughly against the wall and left.

The idea that he's married -- and not only that, married to _Lance_ , one of the most romantically inclined people Keith has ever met -- has honestly thrown him a little bit. Lance is naturally charming and flirtatious, and Keith is...not.

"I bought you an anniversary present last year," Keith offers, because he knows that's true at the very least. Apparently it had been a terrible one, but Lance doesn't have to know that.

Lance's gaze softens a little. "Apparently getting married on Earth was your idea," he says. Keith raises his eyebrows in surprise, and Lance shrugs. "I was sort of digging at Hunk for more information and he mentioned that you were the one who wanted to wait to have it on Earth. I wanted to get married right away and just have a ceremony on Earth, but you thought it would be more special to be married where we were born." His mouth quirks up at one corner. "Who would have thought, huh?"

The music is winding down, which is good because Keith honestly has no answer for that, but Lance doesn't let him go, tightening his grip when Keith tries to pull his hand away, and they whirl into the next dance. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Shiro cut into Allura's dance with the ambassador and they begin to carefully wind their way around the room. Their fingers are interlaced rather than only clasped, like Keith's and Lance's are. The room is a blur of voices and lights and laughter.

"Keith?"

Keith looks back at Lance. He's frowning a little, like he's said Keith's name more than once.

"Are you alright?" Lance asks, leaning closer. Keith can count the lightest freckles on his nose from here.

"I think -- I think we should find out as much as we can about our relationship," Keith says abruptly. He wants to focus on something other than the flush on Lance's face, or the way the tunic shows off his broad shoulders, or the fact that Lance's thumb has started rubbing back and forth over his hand again. Thinking about ways to get them out of here is infinitely more appealing than thinking about the fact that he's dancing with Lance around a full ballroom, with everyone else under the impression that they're married.

"What?" Lance asks, brows furrowing.

"I think that's what she wanted us to do. I think she wanted us to see that we could be close, and to figure out how we managed to do it. That's why we haven't gone back yet. We know that this Keith and Lance are married, but we don't know why, or how."

"And how do you propose we find out?" Lance asks. "It's not like we kept diaries that keep up with our daily lives, 'Dear Diary, today Keith gave me first shower after he kicked my ass during training, I think I'm falling in love.' Where are we supposed to look?"

Keith makes a frustrated noise. "We've got to have records or something. The others have to know about our relationship. This is the only thing I can think of doing -- don't you _want_ to go back? Do you have a _better_ idea?"

Lance scowls at him and then settles into a pout. "Fine," he says. "We can start looking first thing in the morning."

"Good," Keith replies. Part of him knows it's a terrible idea, to keep digging into their relationship -- but the rest of him can't go on for five more days like this, pretending to be something they're not. Not when he's beginning to let himself want it.

He swallows hard around words that want to spill out and lets Lance continue to spin him around the dance floor. When they finally pull to a stop, Keith tries to pull away, but Lance holds on and raises his hand, tentatively brushing a kiss over his knuckles, and then leaves him standing there. Keith clenches his fists. The skin where Lance's lips had touched burns.

Keith can still feel it hours later, laying in bed with Lance sleeping soundly next to him.


	2. Part Two

"Did we turn into hoarders as we grew older?" Lance asks, setting aside yet another box of alien paraphernalia. They've been going through the storage closet in their room all morning, hauling out boxes of books and toys and decorative weapons and real weapons (something they found out by accidentally firing a hole into the wall with something that looked like a laser pointer, hastily hidden by moving a picture). There are scrolls featuring artistic depictions of Voltron, and beautiful landscapes presumably from the planet they came from. There are piles of clothing, formal and informal alike, hats and shoes and an entire chest full of jewelry. Lance actually puts in a pretty blue set of earrings he finds, and puts a sparkling sun stud in Keith's left ear because they can't find its match. He's kind of surprised to find his ears are still pierced -- he'd had them done when he was a teenager, but he'd assumed the holes would have closed up.

The whole venture has kind of felt like rummaging through the attic of relatives you never knew but had a distant connection to. There are papers from banquets they've gone to, gorgeous masks with intricate stitching and beautiful flashing sequins. There are signs with their names messily scrawled across them, with little handprints with three fingers pressed at the bottom. There are things neither of them can decipher the purpose of and decide must just be works of art. A black sphere with white dots at the bottom and top appears completely useless, but when they shake it, it starts playing a song in a warbling tone that leaves Keith feeling oddly hollow. There are stacks and stacks of letters from people on planets they've saved, meticulously bundled and stored in sturdy clear boxes.

There's nothing useful regarding their relationship, though. All of this stuff seems impersonal, packaged away to preserve but not to use. It's curious to see what they've accumulated, all of the different planets and cultures they've seen, the people they've met. But it all feels -- foreign, to Keith. It feels like reading about a character in a book who shares your name.

"I don't think we keep our personal stuff here," Keith says finally, sitting back on his heels. They've been at this for a couple of hours now, and they have nothing tangible to show for it. He scrapes the back of his hand over his forehead, sweaty and overheated in the cramped room. "We must keep it _somewhere._ "

"If we ask the others about our wedding stuff, would that be suspicious?" Lance asks, absently holding a decorative fan to the light and spinning it. The colors on it flash strangely as it flips back and forth. "Or about stuff we did when we were dating, too, I guess. We want to go as far back as we can."

"If we can do it casually, I guess," Keith says skeptically. "Where would we keep things if not in the storage area?"

Lance hums for a moment, and then says, "Oh!" and dives back into the room. Keith follows him back out to find him half under the bed, legs wiggling as he pushes himself deeper. "I knew it!" he yells, muffled, and then drags himself out from under the bed clutching a box.

Keith kneels next to him as he opens the lid, and inside are several tablets, as well as a few photo albums. Some of them look very old, while others are clearly new.

"How did you know?" Keith asks, picking up one of the older albums. There's a small boy on the cover, surrounded by other children -- it's Lance, and what look like all four of his siblings, all in front of a yellow house with a giant tree in the yard, smiling widely at the camera. Lance is missing a tooth. Keith sets it to the side, feeling strangely like he doesn't have permission to look.

"It's where I keep everything important at home," Lance says, already flipping through the photos on a tablet. "That way it's close but out of the way."

"I just kept junk under my bed," Keith mutters, grabbing a newer album. This one looks like it's a few years old rather than twenty, and features pictures of the crew on a very idyllic planet, playing on what looks like a beach. There are pictures of everyone, Shiro sleeping under an awning set up on the beach, Pidge squinting at some kind of animal they're crouched next to that sort of resembles a giant slug, Hunk sprawled out on the sand making an angel with his arms and legs. Allura and Coran are in a set of pictures that detail a slow progression up the beach with a huge bucket of water, which they dump onto Shiro. There are pictures of Keith midway through pulling his shirt off, pictures of Keith walking along the edge of the water, pictures of Keith looking at whoever is holding the camera and grinning. He flips the page and finds Lance's face filling the picture, with Keith pressed alongside him -- Keith is pink in the face and laughing. Lance is smiling brightly, eyes flashing in the sunlight. In the next picture, Lance is kissing Keith on the cheek.

"Huh," Lance says, peering over his shoulder. Keith almost feels the urge to snap the album closed, like he's been caught looking at something he shouldn't. "We're _that_ couple."

"What's with the emphasis?" Keith asks, flipping past the beach pictures to find more of them around the castle. It looks like the camera must belong to Lance, because a majority of photos feature everyone but him, and most of them are with Keith in focus. Keith sleeping in bed, Keith brushing his teeth, Keith laughing at something Hunk has said, Keith sparring with Pidge, Keith reaching for the camera, Keith blurred but still visibly smiling. Then there are photos of Lance, laughing so hard his eyes are closed, blowing a kiss at the camera, halfway out of frame -- then pictures of the two of them, disheveled hair and bright eyes, Lance holding the camera at arms length. This time there's a picture of Keith kissing the curve of Lance's jaw.

He closes the book firmly.

"You know," Lance says, looking through one of the tablets, tapping through photos of what look like some kind of party. "The overly affectionate, disgustingly cute couple. The couple that kind of makes you wanna throw up but they're too adorable to not at least sort of like."

It's not the way he would have described a future relationship, but it's hard to ignore the evidence. Keith pulls out one of the tablets as well.

"Here's the wedding," he says. The first picture is a shot of a pamphlet that states the reader is welcome to observe the union of Keith Kogane and Lance McClain at Josone Park in downtown Varadero. "We had an outdoor wedding. In a park."

"Oh, I played there when I was younger," Lance says, setting his tablet down and shuffling closer to Keith. He rests his arm behind Keith to lean in so that his face is right next to Keith's; he can feel the warmth all along his left side. "I bet my mom asked for it to be there, she loves that park."

"I would've guessed beach wedding," Keith admits, flipping through to the next picture, which is a bunch of people eagerly lining up under palm trees in various styles of clothing -- there are aliens attending as well, including a few that Keith recognizes from those they've already met, like the Arusians and the Balmerans, although he doesn't see Shay.

"Nah, sand gets everywhere, and the wind is more unpredictable. Mama would have wanted it to be perfect -- oh, hey, there's Shiro!"

It's Shiro in a black and white suit, hair swept up, laughing at something Coran is saying. Coran is similarly dressed, mustache twirled up even more at the ends, gesturing wildly with one hand. There's a red flower pinned to Shiro's lapel, and a blue one to Coran's. The next few pictures show the rest of the paladins in their wedding attire; everyone is wearing a suit, except Allura, who's wearing a sparkly black dress with a red flower pinned on her chest. Pidge also has a red flower, and Hunk is wearing a blue one. The last few photos of the group include Shay, standing next to Hunk with a soft smile, also with a blue flower pinned to her clothing.

After that, it's a tide of people who have Lance's eyes and nose and mouth, wearing a cacophony of colors and styles. His mother is wearing a blue flower on her pale pink dress in one photo, beaming up at Shiro. In another, Pidge and Lance's father are leaned close, looking at a robot wearing a flower crown together.

Lance doesn't say anything, just stares at the photographs intently. Keith glances at him as each picture comes up before swiping through to the next one.  They watch his entire family gather slowly in the pictures, surrounding the paladins, talking and laughing together, a mixture of red and blue flowers pinned to their clothes. There are a few people Keith doesn't recognize with red flowers on their lapels or dresses, humans to the visible eye -- he looks hard at them, trying to see a resemblance, trying to discern how they came to be at his wedding, but they don't look like relatives, and he doesn't remember them from his time on Earth. Another mystery added to the pile that continues to grow the longer they're in the future.

Another swipe and there's a picture of Lance staring at himself in the mirror, hands adjusting his bow tie. Another picture of the mirror shows Hunk standing with the tablet behind him, beaming brightly while Lance laughs and touches his own smile. He looks -- incandescently happy. His expression is soft and almost glowing in the next few pictures as he and Hunk make final touches to his suit, to the bright red flower tucked into his pocket. He looks like he's never been happier. Keith's breath catches in his throat just seeing a picture; he can't imagine what it was like in real life. He looks sideways at Lance, whose face is carefully blank. He doesn't know what to say, if there's anything to say. Something deep in the pit of his stomach is aching. He wants to take back ever suggesting they look into this at all.

He swipes through quickly, surprised when a new picture shows Shiro and Allura with their heads pressed close, smiling at the camera. Allura has her fingertip to her mouth, shushing the viewer. The next picture shows a doorway cracked open, with a figure turned away from them framed in the gap. It's Keith, with slightly longer hair than he has now, and in the next picture he's turned to face Shiro and Allura, and he's got wide eyes, his face is flushed,  and he's smiling so softly Keith can feel the ache of it in his cheeks even now. His tie is crooked, and there's a vibrant blue flower in his pocket.

He looks -- he looks --

"You--" Lance says, but his voice cracks a little before he can finish. He clears his throat, and Keith, face burning, quickly flips through the next few pictures, flashes of Keith laughing and Shiro fixing his tie and Allura running her fingers through his hair rushing past until he gets to the actual ceremony. Lance clears his throat again but doesn't finish his thought. Keith doesn't say anything.

There's a video of the wedding, but Keith doesn't know if he can sit here and watch the entire forty-five minute ceremony. They let it play as Lance's mother and father walk him down the aisle to where Allura is standing, apparently officiating, as Shiro walks Keith to meet him, as they turn to face each other. There's something about the way they're looking at each other that sticks in Keith's chest like a knife -- the Keith and Lance onscreen lock eyes and it's like the rest of the world has faded away. Keith can't bear to look at them.

"I don't think this is helping," he says, handing the tablet roughly to Lance. Lance fumbles and then pauses the video, staring a moment longer as Keith clutches and Lance's hand onscreen, mouth parted for words Keith doesn't want to hear. "This is the -- the result of our relationship, not the beginning of it," he continues. "We need to know how it started, not how it ends."

"Marriage isn't the end," Lance murmurs, setting the wedding video aside. His face is impassive.

"I--" Keith stutters, flustered at the shift in Lance's expression. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah," Lance sighs. "I know." There's a pause, and then he smiles, but it pales in comparison to the one Keith now knows he can make. "I'm tired of looking at this stuff. We've been at it for hours. Wanna go see what Earth food we can make? I wanna take advantage of the one good part about being here."

It's not going to help them leave, but Keith will take any excuse to leave these memories that don't belong to him behind. "Yes," he says gratefully.

"I wonder if I could make garlic knots," Lance says thoughtfully. "My mother's recipe. You'll love them! Oh, I wonder if you've already had them."

"Well, _I_ haven't," Keith says, rolling his eyes. He stands up, stretching his arms above his head. "We're not exactly the same."

"Yeah," Lance says. "You're right." There's something strange about his tone, but when Keith looks at him, he's rolling his shoulders back and shoving the box of pictures to the side of the room. "We can always pick back up later."

"Sure," Keith says, already planning ways to avoid doing exactly that. "Let's go."

 

* * *

   
Keith doesn't have to worry about avoiding Lance and the photographs, because Shiro finds him after lunch and asks to talk to him.

"Is that alright?" Shiro asks Lance, who pops another bite of garlic knot in his mouth and chews, shrugging. "I just know you two have been on some kind of trip down memory lane today," Shiro adds. "Didn't wanna interrupt."

"It's fine," Keith says hastily. "We're just looking through some old things. Lance can keep going without me for a while."

"Aww, sweetheart," Lance says, baring his teeth a little in a smile. "Where's the fun in that? I can wait."

Keith opens his mouth to respond and Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder, forestalling him. "It won't take long. Just wanted some advice."

"Some advice? From Keith?" Lance asks skeptically. Keith resists the urge to flip him off, settles for walking out of the room and gesturing for Shiro to follow him. "See you later, honey!" Lance calls, waggling his fingers goodbye.

Shiro leads him down to the training deck -- this, at least, is familiar. Keith is used to talking through things with Shiro as they spar. It was something they picked up when he decided he wanted to follow Shiro and go to Garrison, when he was barely a teenager and didn't have anyone else to talk to after their parents died. Talking with Shiro as he practiced was part of what made training so calming to Keith, what drew him towards it whenever his head was too full of information or emotion. He's had a thousand speeches delivered to him with the same calm confidence as the blows Shiro traded with him; he could probably say them along with him at this point.

It's harder to judge what Shiro wants to talk about now, though. His face is more or less the same, but this Shiro has seen more than the one he knows in the present, and that Shiro is already almost beyond his grasp. Keith knows there's things Shiro can't explain to him, things he can't bear to talk about -- Shiro was a prisoner for an entire _year_ , Shiro was tortured, Shiro was forced to fight for his life, Shiro lost his arm _\--_ Keith sometimes looks at him, even in his time, and wonders how much of him remains of the brother he had before the Kerberos mission.

But then Shiro will waggle his eyebrows at something stupid Keith has done, or he'll make terrible laser noises, or he'll collapse onto the couch face first and groan for a solid minute, and he's just -- he's Takashi. The same brother that carried Keith home in a thunderstorm without a jacket because Keith had forgotten his. The brother that cut the crusts off of Keith's sandwiches, just like their father did. The brother that hugged him goodbye and disappeared but came back, the way he's always come back.

Shiro stretches a little and Keith copies him, touching his fingertips to his toes and standing up to curl his arms behind him. Shiro's metal arm is easier to see now, and it definitely has Pidge's touch to it. It glows a bright blue, the metal a pale silver in the white light. The designs on it are Altean, but Keith doesn't know enough of it to tell what they mean. Shiro stretches his arm above his head and then straightens up.

They face each other and Keith wastes no time, doesn't give Shiro a chance to prepare, just lunges forward with his bayard in hand.

"What's up?" Keith asks, pivoting as Shiro easily sidesteps him. "Do you really need my advice for something?"

Shiro snorts, swiping his hand and clashing with the sword Keith swings between them. "No, I just couldn't think of anything else to say to your better half," he says.

"Well, he definitely bought it," Keith says sarcastically. Shiro rolls his eyes and swipes with his feet, forcing Keith to jump backwards and raise his arms for balance. Shiro smirks and his arm glows bright white, a clear blade extending past his grip like an extension of his arm. Keith has to scurry backwards to avoid it coming down on his head. "Hey!" he says without thinking, thrown off by this addition to Shiro's arsenal.

"You know the rules," Shiro says, grinning wickedly, and pursues. "The rules" between them when they're sparring has always really meant one thing: there really aren't any rules. "I just wanted to check and make sure you two are okay, I guess," he adds, slicing with his new sword. "You don't usually argue like that."

"We _don't?_ " Keith asks incredulously, almost tripping over himself as he ducks under the blow. The transparent sword falls against his bayard with enough force that he winces, pushing back and then ducking away and under. He's always been faster than Shiro, and that doesn't seem to have changed, especially since Shiro has grown older. Keith is fifteen feet away in the time it takes Shiro to turn and face him again. They regard each other for a moment. Shiro's face is serious.

"No, you don't. You guys really don't argue about anything that much anymore. And you've seemed on edge the last couple of days." Shiro hefts his sword and starts to pace sideways; Keith lets his feet follow the natural counter progression, eyes locked onto Shiro's because Shiro always has a tell before he moves -- he braces his right foot and then lunges, and Keith darts away, swinging his bayard at Shiro's arm and barely grazing it.

"We're fine," Keith says. He hadn't realized that they'd been so obvious -- he hadn't realized that apparently, he and Lance got along so well now that their bickering was strange. Or maybe it was that Shiro had known Keith long enough to know it was more than simple bickering, that Keith was actually fracturing at little fault lines he hadn't known he'd had.

He'd woken up this morning with his arms around Lance's waist, face buried in the back of his neck. For a long moment, he'd just let himself pretend that it was real, that he was really allowed to be there, that Lance would wake up and turn in his arms and kiss him good morning. It had been harder than he ever imagined to carefully unwind his arms and crawl out of bed, to pull himself away from something that felt _right_. He’s gone so long thinking that he was past this, that he could just -- ignore it and it would be fine, but he can feel himself giving in a little more with every passing minute here, every piece of their history they uncover.

Shiro's always known before Keith exactly when he was about to break. He hopes that's not what this is.

"We're fine," he repeats, more confidently this time. "We're just -- you know, talking some stuff out. Remembering what we were like when we were younger." Sensing an excuse to get more information, he adds, "Do you remember what it was like when we first got together?"

"Do I remember you both tiptoeing around each other and hiding your relationship from the rest of us for months? Yeah," Shiro says, laughing. "You two never told us when you actually got together, but none of us were really surprised. Why were you talking about that?" He parries the lunge carries Keith to the other side of the training area, as their swords slide against each other in a loud scraping noise.

"I was wondering how we ended up together," Keith says bluntly. It's sometimes better to just be honest with Shiro. Shiro's brow furrows a little, and he comes to a halt, sword shimmering into nothingness, arm returning to normal. "Why he wanted to be with me," Keith blurts before he can help it, lowering his own sword. The silence that follows afterward fills the huge room, until Shiro makes a small noise of disbelief.

"Keith," Shiro says, frowning. "You know how he feels about you. You guys have been together forever."

Keith drops his gaze. "I do know that," he lies.

"He loves you, Keith," Shiro says firmly. "I've never seen anyone look at someone the way he looks at you. Is that what all this is? You're feeling -- insecure?"

Keith feels heat prickling at the corners of his eyes; he refuses to look up, even though he knows Shiro is stepping closer. "I'm -- we're nothing alike," Keith says, spilling the words between them in a rush. "He's funny, and charming, and he knows how to talk to people -- he's _beautiful_ , Shiro, he could be with anyone in the world, in the universe, so why--"

"Keith," Shiro interrupts, dropping a hand on his shoulder. "He loves _you_. That's what's most important."

Keith shoves his hands into his pockets, torn between leaning into Shiro and pulling away. It's easy for Shiro to comfort a Keith who's been married for years now, who should be secure in his relationship with Lance. All Keith knows is that in his time, where he belongs, Lance thinks they're rivals, and that Keith hates him, and that they'll never get along. That's a long way away from _He loves you_. He's starting to wonder if this entire trip through time or space or universes has all been some kind of punishment rather than a learning opportunity. There's a bitter taste in his mouth, all of his worries on the tip of his tongue. He swallows them.

"You're right," he says, trying a tentative smile, looking up at his brother again. Shiro's concerned face is the same now as it was ten years ago, and the same as ten years before that. It's comforting enough to see that familiar expression that Keith's smile becomes a little less forced. "I've just been -- in a weird mood lately. You know."

"Have you talked to him about this?" Shiro asks.

"I don't want to -- I don't want to worry him," Keith replies haltingly. "Don't say anything to the others, Shiro. I'll talk to him."

"He's your husband, Keith," Shiro says, squeezing once and then letting go. "You should trust him with this."

"Yeah," Keith murmurs, wondering if future Keith would be the kind of person who could actually do that. Right now he'd rather fight Zarkon again than think about voicing anything to Lance. He clears his throat, then looks up at Shiro and tilts his head. "What about you though?"

Shiro tenses. "What about me?" he asks warily.

Keith rolls his eyes. "I'm not blind, Shiro. None of us are." He raises his eyebrow meaningfully. "It's been ten years and you're still dragging your feet?"

"I'm not -- she's not -- it's not the same," Shiro stammers. His face has gone scarlet, which is immensely gratifying after the conversation Keith just lived through. "She's a princess. She's an alien princess heading a rebellion. She’s already dealing with -- her entire planet and species was--"

"I'm not hearing any real reason that you shouldn't be with her," Keith says. "These just sound like facts about Allura. What about letting her decide what she is and isn't equipped to handle?"

Shiro makes a face. "It's not that easy," he retorts.

"Nothing ever is, but you always act like anything can be solved through _talking_ when you use your capable-older-brother voice," Keith shoots back. "I was just giving you a taste of your own medicine."

"Where did I go wrong when I raised you," Shiro mutters to himself, and then yelps when Keith lunges and tackles him to the mat. "Hey!" he says, breaking down into laughter, "Cheating!"

"You know the rules," Keith replies, grinning, and digs his fingers into Shiro's most ticklish spots, putting the conversation behind him.

 

* * *

   
Lance isn't in their room when he gets back, but the boxes have clearly been sifted through in his absence, despite Lance's words earlier. The tablet that holds their wedding video is sitting on top still, like he'd held it last, and Keith stares at it, stomach twisting, wondering if Lance watched the whole thing. He's reaching towards it when the bathroom opens and Lance comes striding out with a towel around his waist, still dripping wet.

"Fuck!" Lance yells, jerking to a halt when he sees Keith. "Oh my god, you scared me," he says, chest rising and falling rapidly, hand over his heart. "I thought you'd be gone longer."

Keith can feel himself flushing, staring at Lance standing there in the doorway, water sliding down his throat and over his chest. Lance seems to realize his own nakedness at the same time Keith does, because he makes a stifled noise and turns to go back into the bathroom. Something catches Keith's eye as he turns his back, and he says "Wait!" before he can stop himself.

Lance stops again, looking back over his shoulders; the tips of his ears are red, Keith thinks nonsensically. But his back is on display now, and Keith can see that in the middle of his shoulders, there's a scarlet marking between his shoulders. For a moment, Keith is terrified that Lance has been hurt somehow, that there's blood all over his back, but when he gets closer he can see it's a tattoo.

It's a tattoo of the Red Paladin's symbol.

"What?" Lance asks, twisting his body to try and see. Keith steps closer, reaching out and touching the symbol without thinking. Lance goes still under his touch. "What is it?"

"You've got a tattoo," Keith says, tracing the edges with his fingertips, before realizing what he's doing and jerking his hand away abruptly. "It's my -- it's the Red Paladin's symbol."

"A tattoo?" Lance asks, sounding somewhere between thrilled and horrified. He rushes back into the bathroom, spinning around to the mirror and staring at his back with wide eyes. "Holy shit," he breathes out.

It's bright red, stark even against Lance's dark skin. The design is unmistakable; Keith has seen enough of the flames that stand for his paladin designation since they started all of this to be able to draw it in his sleep. They've all learned as much as they can about what it means to be Spirit Guardians, about what Allura remembers about the former paladins, about their connections to their lions -- but that doesn't explain why Lance would get the Red Paladin's symbol tattooed on him.

"I bet you have a matching one," Lance says suddenly, turning to look at him. Keith hesitates, but pulls his shirt off and over his head, turning to show his back to Lance. He inhales sharply in a way that says his guess was right. "It's mine," Lance says, and Keith glances over his shoulder and into the mirror to see it.

It's the color of Lance's eyes, which can't be an accident, a deep blue in the shape of the Blue Paladin's symbol, set in the same spot Lance's is. Now that he knows it's there, it's almost like he can feel it, even though he knows that's not really possible.

"Wow," Lance says quietly. "We're really -- we really mean it, huh?" He's still looking at Keith's back. "Future us, I mean. They're serious about each other."

Keith's mouth feels dry, so he swallows before he says, "How is this any different than the rings?"

Lance looks up at him with unreadable eyes. "It's a part of us," he says. "You're in my skin, Keith."

The way he says it echoes throughout Keith's body like a physical blow, something he feels deep in his gut, but he just hums noncommittally, pulling his shirt back on over his body. "I wonder where we got them."

Lance turns to look at his own tattoo in the mirror again. His mouth twists. "It's probably not important," he says in a strange voice. "For getting us back, I mean."

Keith can tell there's something wrong by his tone, can tell that he's thinking about something other than the tattoos, but he doesn't know how to ask Lance about it -- he doesn't know if Lance _wants_ him to. "Lance," he starts to say, but Lance turns away from the mirror to look at him.

"I kinda still need to get dressed, dude," he says. His voice sounds normal now, or what Keith has always thought was normal, but he doesn't know if he knows _anything_ about Lance at this point. How much of it is being in a different body, how much is Keith just paying more attention now that they're in close quarters all the time, how much is he just projecting onto Lance? He hates not knowing almost as much as he hates how helpless he feels all the time.

Lance waggles his fingertips playfully at the door, mouth quirked in a half-smile.

"Right," Keith says quickly, backing out of the room. The door to the bathroom swishes closed and Keith keeps backing up until he feels the back of his knees hit the bed, sitting down on the edge of it.

Tattoos. They have tattoos of each other's symbols.

Keith doesn't realize he's spinning his ring around his finger until he nearly twists it off in agitation. He lets go just as Lance sticks his head out of the bathroom with a sheepish face.

"I don't have any clothes in here." His mouth is still lifted up into that small smile. Keith still wants to ask him if he's okay. "Do you think you could pass me some things?"

"Sure," Keith sighs, resigning himself to his own cowardice. He walks over the closet, looking blankly at the clothes. On a whim, he decides to pick the worst combination possible, just because he can. Hopefully it'll diffuse the tenseness lingering in the room, and if not, he can just excuse himself and go back to the training deck, or find out what Pidge is doing, and leave Lance to pick his own clothes.

He hands over a pair of dark green leggings and a purple and orange checkered tunic shirt through the gap in the door Lance allows, relishing the outraged noises he makes when he sees what Keith has given him. There's shuffling noises for a few minutes, and then silence. The silence turns into stifled laughter, and with a soft whooshing noise, Lance comes out decked in the clothing, mouth twitching at the corners of a very pronounced scowl.

"What’s with these clothes?" Lance asks sweetly, tugging at the shirt. He looks horrendous -- not even Lance's good looks can distract from the clashing colors or how unflattering the top is. Keith barely cares about clothing and it's offensive to him.

"I think you look great," Keith answers, attempting to look at serious as possible. Lance squints at him like he's not sure if he's lying or not. "Do you not like it?"

"I'm like 90% sure you're fucking with me," Lance says slowly, "But I can't tell."

Keith keeps his face very straight. "Careful, babe," he says, "You'll hurt my feelings.

"Oh my god," Lance says, and then bursts into laughter. "You're an asshole," he adds, already walking over to the closet. "Oh, hey, how'd your talk with Shiro go? Did you give him good advice?" He sheds his top and Keith gets another glimpse of the tattoo, and looks away quickly.

"Yeah," he says. "We talked through some stuff. It was -- good."

"Good," Lance echoes. "Alright." He pulls on a soft pink shirt and a white jacket, and contemplates his leggings.

"You look like a watermelon," Keith says without thinking. Lance turns to look at him with an incredulous expression. Keith gestures to him. "You know. Pink and green and white. If your shirt had black spots it would be -- what?" Lance starts laughing again halfway through his explanation, and Keith frowns.

"You're right," Lance says, reaching up to rub at his eyes, still chuckling. "I can see it. I'll leave the leggings. Wanna go see if we can find Pidge and Hunk and do something -- something normal for a little while?" His eyes are bright, and his smile finally feels closer to that genuine one Keith remembers from the pictures.

"Sure," he says. "Sounds good."

He follows Lance from their room, nudging the box of memories out of the way as he passes.

That night, he goes to sleep determined to stay on his side of the bed. He waits until Lance has fallen asleep and then builds a wall of pillows between them, curling onto his side, ignoring the guilty squirming in his stomach. He wakes up in the middle of the night with Lance's feet tangled with his own, and a hand thrown over the wall of pillows, nestled in his hair -- Lance sleeps on, lashes fluttering, and Keith buries his face in his pillow and sighs.

 

* * *

 

The Tholians had given them some intel on Haggar's possible location, so they spend the next morning with the rest of the crew in the planning room, going over the information and what their course of action should be.

"I know we're allies now but I'd like to verify," Allura says. "Coran, will you work with Pidge to check the area and go over their sources?"

"Of course, princess," Coran says, gathering up his tablet. Pidge nods their head, gesturing to the floating robot that has been hovering next to them -- Spike, apparently, the robot Pidge was working on earlier in the week. It looks closer to Altean tech than Rover had, white and silver and blue -- it can speak, as well, in a voice strangely reminiscent of GPSes on Earth. It says, "I will compile your own research and cross reference it with the new information, Pidge," in its soft voice and follows them out of the room as they head to the control room.

"Hunk, Lance, Keith, I'd appreciate it if you could go make sure the lions are ready in case we end up in battle. I know the Yellow Lion was recently checked, but the last time I flew Black, she informed me she could use some maintenance."

"Will do," Hunk says, saluting Allura. Keith trades a look with Lance, raising his brows. Lance looks back with wide eyes, looking sideways at Allura. _Allura piloting?_ he mouths at Keith, and Keith shrugs helplessly. He wonders if that means that Allura is the sole pilot now, although when they were on Tholi the people had treated Shiro as the Black Paladin, and he'd worn the armor.

"Let's go, guys," Hunk says. "Make cutesy faces at each other later."

"We weren't--" Keith starts to say, but Lance grabs his hand and pulls him up and towards the door.

"C'mon babe, let's go see how our ladies are doing," Lance says, squeezing his hand and smiling. Keith swallows but lets himself get tugged along. His wedding ring rubs along Lance's palm as they walk, but Lance just adjusts their grip and keeps walking. Hunk is a few steps ahead of them, whistling a faintly familiar tune. Lance starts to hum along, so it must be a song from Earth, but Keith can't place it.

He hadn't realized that they hadn't checked in on their lions up until now. It seems silly, given that the only being in the universe that's really been in Keith's head other than Klessia is Red -- Red knows him better than anyone, maybe even Shiro. She has to have some idea of what's going on.

"We should've done this before," Lance murmurs quietly, clearly having arrived at the same conclusion. Keith tightens his grip on Lance's hand and reaches out tentatively with his mind as they step into the hangar. The lions are all spread out on their stomachs in a line, gleaming and battered at the same time --  they've clearly been through several rounds of repairs, but somehow they're just as breathtaking and terrifying as the first time they'd seen them.

Red reaches him first, purring warmly in his mind, but she draws up immediately. He tentatively pushes against her, and she meets him again, but more curious. She can clearly tell his mind is different, younger -- she nudges against his memories and he tries to give her as much as he can about their situation.

She laughs, long and loud, in his head. Lance makes a huffy noise that makes Keith think that he's receiving a similar reaction.

 _Do you know what's going on?_ he asks Red, and she does the equivalent of shaking her head at him, still prodding at his mind like it will change. He can't figure out if she can tell if he's from the past, or from another universe; how he compares to the Keith she knows. She refuses to give him the answer, cheerfully twisting out of his mental grasp. Another dead end, after all.

He reaches out again and she wraps carefully around him, purring again. _It will be alright_ , she tells him, and in the hangar her robot body twitches its tail. Blue's ears flick and Lance laughs under his breath a little bit. Keith realizes too late they're still holding hands.

"Okay, I think Yellow is okay for right now, she says she's still good," Hunk says. "I'm gonna check on Black since Allura said something was up with her, you guys can check on your own and then Green while I'm working."

"Sounds good," Lance says, clapping Hunk on the shoulder -- he lets go of Keith's hand to do it and Keith clenches his fist and drops it into his pocket. "Bluebird, you ready for a checkup?"

Blue's eyes flash with light and he laughs again, louder this time. Keith leaves him when Hunk heads towards Black, making his way towards Red. She's a warm and familiar presence in his mind, somehow unchanged -- or maybe it's that she's always felt bigger and older and more than he could ever really understand, so there's little difference between ten years ago and now.

 _Are you okay?_ he asks when he's finally in the cockpit, stroking a hand over her controllers. She continues to purr, twining their consciousnesses together with evident interest in comparing him to the Keith who's grown up with her.

Everything is the same in here as well, although the seat is slightly more worn, and there's a picture of the entire crew taped to the console. Everyone is grouped together, arms around shoulders and wide, cheesy smiles. It looks maybe only a couple of years old -- there are rings on Keith and Lance's fingers, noticeable because Lance has his arm wrapped all the way around Keith's waist and Keith is leaned into Lance, hand against his chest. They're looking at the camera, but only just, as if they'd been distracted and then told to pay attention. The surface of the picture is worn slightly over Lance's chest.

Keith touches two fingertips to the spot and strokes down. It also feels familiar, even though he's never done it before in his life.

He feels that same ache in his chest.

Red seems fine, but he goes over her anyways, checking her power source, her weaponry, making sure she's not low on any of her fluids. She keeps up a running commentary as he goes, probing about what she's like in the past like she hasn't already lived tens of thousands of years, like ten years would be enough to matter. It's calming though, to tell her little stories about how their training is going in his time, about their bond.

 _You called me good kitty_ , she thinks at him fondly. He blinks up at her in confusion, and she continues, _The first time we met, when I saved you._

Right. He'd almost forgotten about that. He'd barely registered saying it, still breathless from being sucked into space and then swallowed by a giant robotic cat.

 _I knew then,_ she says _, exactly who you were_.

Keith closes the last of her panels and drops to sit on the floor, leaning his head against her cool surface and laughing slightly. "And who is that?" he asks, twisting the ring around his finger absently.

 _A person worth loving,_ she whispers to him. She pushes, and he feels flooded with her all of a sudden, all of her emotions tangling with his own -- it leaves him with tears in his eyes, how much she cares, how much they've gone through. She doesn't let him see anything specific but he can feel their combined giddiness, their terror and excitement and fury, all the ways they match up and grate against each other and how many times they've fought and made up and how much she loves, loves, loves him.

"Red," he gasps, pressing his hand against the wall. "Red, I get it." He wipes his hand over his eyes, scrubbing the tears from his face, laughing despite himself. Red pulls back, but part of her lingers, rubbing comfortingly against him. "You're so dramatic," he mutters, but he keeps his palm against her.

 _You propose to Lance in the middle of a battle,_ she replies tartly. He flushes at how knowing her voice is, and stands up, pushing himself to his feet.

"I think you're fine," he says, ignoring her snickers. "I'm gonna go check on the other two."

 _On Lance_ , she says pointedly.

"You're worse than he is," he tells her, which only makes her laugh more.

She opens her mouth and lets him out, and he cautiously makes his way towards Blue, who sits impassively. He sends a thought her way carefully, not really expecting anything. Allura had said that it might be possible for them to work on communicating to each other's lions with work, but in his time they hadn't seen any progress towards that at all.

Keith tries to speak to her the way he does Red, and she immediately opens for him, meeting him halfway. She feels very different from Red, all leaping thoughts and bright motion where Red is smooth and swift; it feels like borrowing an outfit that fits but doesn't quite feel right. She assures him with a glancing thought that that's normal and opens her mouth, letting him inside.

He makes his way into Blue, trying to listen for Lance, but it's quiet in the hallway, no signs of Lance anywhere. Blue sends him towards the storage area in the back of her head, where he can hear shuffling noises.

"Lance?" he calls, and there's a banging noise and a grunt. Lance emerges from from behind a panel clutching his forehead. There's a smear of something dark on his chin, but somehow none anywhere else.

"How did you get in here?" he asks petulantly, letting go of his head.

"Blue let me in," Keith says, shrugging.

"Blue, you could've given me a heads up," Lance mutters. She must say something to him, because he makes a face. His cheeks go a little red, and he looks sharply at Keith as if he might have heard. Keith makes his face as impassive as possible. "Red's okay?" Lance asks finally, closing the panel and walking closer.

"Yeah," Keith says. "Just checked over her. What about Blue, why do you have--" He cuts off and gestures to his chin, and Lance frowns.

"What?" he asks, rubbing at his face and missing the spot. Keith sighs and reaches out, rubbing the smudge himself and showing the grease to Lance. Lance flushes pink again and scrubs roughly at his own face again. "I was making sure some of her gears were properly aligned. She thought they felt a little off."

"Right," Keith says, suddenly embarrassed. He rubs the grease on his pants and looks around the room, identical to Red but with blue tinted lighting. The cockpit is behind him, and he wonders if Lance has anything personal in there to ground him, to hold him in place the way Keith's future self does.

"She couldn't tell you anything, could she?" Keith asks, shoving the thought to the back of his mind.

"Nah," Lance replies, stroking a hand over the wall. "Blue says she thinks she remembers something happening to us when we were younger, but we never really shared anything or talked about it. And time is...weird, for her."

"Right," Keith murmurs. Blue hums at him, more of a chirp than anything he's used to with Red.

"Do you think--" Lance says, and then cuts off. He looks unsure, hesitant -- his mouth twists in a parody of a smile and then straightens again. "Do you think we should talk to Shiro and Allura yet?" Lance finishes.

"It hasn't been a week yet," Keith says, brow furrowing.

"I know, but I'm -- starting to wonder if we're ever going to figure this out. We know we're some really great couple in this future but knowing that isn't doing anything for us. There's no way for us to find out how we got together because we kept our relationship a secret from everyone else, we didn't keep records or anything, we have no other clues--"

Lance is starting to look flustered, so Keith reaches out and grabs his wrist, tugging his hand close. Lance's mouth closes with an audible click, and Keith tightens his grip a little, thinks of the worn photograph in his cockpit, the ring on his finger, the ink spread over his skin.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out, and almost unconsciously, Lance copies him. His eyes look a little less wild and he sucks in another breath when Keith does, then lets it out slowly.

"I know," Keith says quietly, "That we don't have any idea about what we're doing. But I -- I want to figure this out. I think we have to figure this out."

"What are we supposed to do, Keith?" Lance asks helplessly, angrily. "Fine, we're friends, we like each other, we're not rivals. I admit it. Why isn't that enough? Wasn't that what she wanted from us?"

Keith snorts a little. "Clearly not," he says, gesturing to his body, which remains older. Lance scowls.

"Where are the Keith and Lance who belong here, what are we missing from all of this?" Lance insists, crossing his arms. "I think we need to explore new options."

"I'd be happy to hear something from _you_ ," Keith snaps. "Anything? Any ideas?"

Lance glares at him for a long time and then lowers his arms. "I don't know," he admits. "I don't know what the _point_ is anymore."

Keith swallows his frustration. Part of him wants to agree with Lance, to run to Shiro and ask for his guidance the way he's always been able to do in the past. Part of him wants someone else to take the decisions away from him. Part of him wants to be able to stop pretending, to be able to keep his distance again, to be able to build up the wall between himself and Lance the way he's been doing for years now.

Part of him desperately wants to keep pretending, because part of him is afraid this is the only chance he'll get.

"We agreed on a week," he says. "Can we just -- wait a few more days? Please," he adds when Lance still looks unsure. Blue hums again in his mind, and Lance glances up at the ceiling like he's heard something too. He finally sighs.

"You're right," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "I'll keep looking for other things to try. Maybe we can ask more about the Brakyans, or how their mindmeld thing works. We've got to start exploring other avenues."

"Alright," Keith agrees. "Let's go check Green and then we can ask Allura or Coran about them."

"Sure," Lance says. "Can I just -- have a second with Blue? You go ahead." He looks up at the ceiling again, dismissive, and Keith squashes the abrupt feeling of hurt that springs up. Blue rumbles comfortingly at him, but doesn't say anything.

"Yeah," Keith replies. "I'll go see if I can get Green to open up. She might not trust me as much as Red and Blue seem to." He doesn't wait to Lance to respond, just heads back down and out of Blue's mouth, giving her one last glance. Her ears twitch again.

Red, as always when he's this close, is a constant presence in his mind. _You're handling this very well_ , she says, not even bothering to hide her sarcasm. He flips her the bird and heads towards the Green Lion, ignoring her laughter echoing through his thoughts.

 

* * *

 

"The Brakyans?" Allura asks, blinking. "I don't think we've heard from them for quite a while."

"About fourteen months since our last communication," Matt confirms, twirling a pen through his fingers. He and Shiro are sitting at the other end of the table, plans and papers spread out in front of them. There's a small speaker playing music that sounds like it's from the 70s next to Shiro's elbow.

"Does this pertain to the new information the Tholians have given us?" Allura asks, tilting her head.

"We were just -- thinking about them," Keith replies haltingly.

Lance nudges him with his shoulder pointedly and says cheerfully, "We were thinking about that first time we met them. Keith and I were talking about what happened."

"You mean when they showed you something psychically and you guys spaced out for a solid minute and then couldn't tell anyone what happened?" Shiro asks, furrowing his brow. "Why were you remembering that?"

"Oh, you know," Lance says, "Just reminiscing a bit. We couldn't agree on what started the whole event."

"You were fidgeting," Keith reminds him. Lance looks at him askance, smile unwavering but suddenly sharper.

"You were being moody," Lance replies, which is probably true, but doesn't negate what Keith said. He opens his mouth to say as much when Lance takes his hand and laces their fingers together. Keith's mouth closes abruptly and Lance pulls him against his side; Keith can smell vanilla. "It's not that important. We just got curious about Klessia and how they were all doing. We thought you might have heard from them."

"Not that I'm aware of," Allura says, tapping her chin. She narrows her eyes at them. "Are you two alright?"

"We're great," Lance says, blinking with wide eyes at her. She doesn't look convinced, but doesn't push. "Could we check that last communication with them? I feel like I was supposed to hear something from them but I'm not sure what."

Keith can't believe he managed to pull that explanation out of his ass so quickly. It's flimsy, but Allura doesn't question it, just taps a few times on her tablet and says, "I've sent the correspondence to your personal tablet, Lance. I don't think Klessia mentioned you specifically, but you're welcome to check."

"Thanks, princess," Lance says, grinning at her.

"Any luck on the info from the Tholians?" Keith asks, trying to change the subject.

"Pidge and Coran managed to confirm there is a planet in that location, and there have been rumors about new activity in one hemisphere's forest region, but we're letting Maryk from Ivax IV confirm, since they're our closest ambassador to that galaxy. I want to trust the Tholians, but there's no need to be incautious, especially after what happened last year."

Shiro grimaces and Matt shudders exaggeratedly. Lance adopts a serious expression, so Keith does his best to mimic him, even though they have no clue what Allura is talking about.

"True," Lance says. "Well, we'll let you guys keep working. Let us know when we're ready to go check it out."

"Of course, Lance," Allura says, smiling at him. "You two have fun reminiscing, but be ready to leave at a moment's notice. Oh, and Keith, I've forgotten until now, but I did receive your message from last week. I can't promise anything, but we'll do our best to make sure you two can visit Earth for your anniversary this year. Perhaps we can all take a break! It would be lovely to see Lance's family again." She beams at him brightly, clasping her hands together.

"Right," Keith says, flushing at the smirks Shiro and Matt are sending him. "Thank you, princess."   

Lance tightens his grip on Keith's fingers but doesn't do more than repeat his thanks, pulling Keith out of the room.

When they get back to the room, Lance lets go of him and immediately heads to his tablet, pulling up the message.

"Princess Allura, we are glad to hear that the blah blah blah," he mutters, skimming through, "Our intelligence indicates that blah blah _blah..._ oh, here, where she's saying goodbye. This might be something. We trust that you will tell your paladins that we hope that you all shall remain ever constant and true to yourselves. We have known from the moment we met you that you truly were the defenders of the universe."

"Constant and true to ourselves?" Keith repeats. "Are you thinking that's meant for us?"

"I mean," Lance says, "It's the most we've got? I don't know why she sent it fourteen months ago but I'm not the one who sent us on this weird Back to the Future nightmare in the first place. What do you think she means?"

Keith has an idea, but he'd rather throw himself out of an airlock again than say it out loud. "I'm not sure," he says. "But we'll assume that she was trying to communicate with us specifically. Hopefully something comes to us."

"Yeah," Lance says doubtfully. He glances at Keith quickly and away just as fast. "So, um," Lance says slowly. "What should we do now? We're on standby until Allura gives us the go ahead, so..."

"Could we -- can we just stay here?" Keith asks, biting his lower lip. "I know we've spent a lot of time alone but being around the others -- I feel like I'm lying to them. Like we're betraying their trust or something."

Lance stares at him for a few long seconds, and then smiles. "I know what you mean. Yeah, let's just -- I think we've got some movies or something in here. We could -- hang out?" he says, tilting the sentence into a question.

Keith's stomach is twisting again, but it's a familiar feeling by now. He grins at Lance and gestures for Lance to pick something on his tablet. Lance throws himself onto the bed, and Keith gingerly follows, leaning up against the wall on his side of the bed.

"Okay, let's see," Lance says, scrolling. "We've got a bunch of oldies on here. Some classics -- oh, hey, you wanna watch Star Wars?"

"What, the whole series?" Keith asks, leaning closer. All 9 movies are in there, as well as a bunch of others Keith recognizes and some he doesn't. He can tell a lot of them are ones Pidge has picked from how terrible they are, but there are a few he's pretty sure Shiro has added as well, because National Treasure is on the list.

"Let's start with the first one," Lance says. "And yeah, I'm talking about A New Hope, don't say it."

"I wasn't gonna," Keith protests, except he was. Lance presses play and there's a momentary pause, before the tablet screen goes dark and a projection starts up on the wall opposite their bed. They both jump as the music starts to play from speakers they can't see, and the text begins to scroll.

"Very nice," Lance says appreciatively, reclining against his pillow. "Now all we need is a popcorn machine."

"Or more of your garlic knots," Keith says, leaning back further, trying to get comfortable. Lance's knee is close to touching his own, but he doesn't want to be too obvious and draw attention to it.

"I'll make some after this and we can start the next one," Lance says absently, eyes already glued to the screen. "Now hush, let me watch this, it's been forever."

They end up watching all three of the first trilogy, and Lance ends up closer and closer to Keith as the day goes on; he doesn't know which of them is moving, but by the time they're halfway through Return of the Jedi, Lance's head is on his shoulder and his hand is resting on Keith's thigh. The blankets are scattered all over the bed, along with remnants of food packages and drink pouches, and the lighting has started to dim as the day has gone on. If Keith turns his head, his nose would be buried in Lance's hair.

Lance yawns and stretches his limbs as the credits start rolling, pushing his head further against Keith's shoulder. "Do you wanna watch the prequels or can we just skip to the last trilogy? I'm dying to see Finn again. Honestly, I can't believe we haven't had some kind of movie night back in our time. This has been awesome."

Keith knows they just spent the entire day doing nothing, wasting time instead of figuring out how to get back to their original bodies, instead of researching or asking questions. Part of him is restless in his skin, desperate to solve everything and get back to normal, but he's also -- content, laying back with Lance resting against him, warm along his whole left side. Lance's other hand is in his own lap, and in the dim lighting his ring glints as the screen lights up with names. His heart feels heavy in his chest.

"Yeah, let's skip ahead," he says quietly. Lance makes a pleased noise and fumbles for the tablet, selecting the next movie. Keith nods off just as Rey finds Luke's old lightsaber, falling asleep to the sound of Lance breathing and the sweet scent of vanilla.

 

* * *

  
"Okay," Pidge says the next morning, pointing their fork at Keith, "Pick one: toast or bagels."

They'd woken up tangled together, which was much less of a surprise five days in, and had gotten ready in companionable silence. They'd agreed to spend today learning as much as they could about everyone's memories of their time with the Brakyans, what they knew about how they worked. Keith had been still deciding on how to broach the topic when Pidge had abruptly started talking about kinds of breakfast foods, and which ones were best.

Keith scrunches his nose up. "Bagels. What kind of question--"

"What about french toast though?" Lance interrupts. “You can't make french bagels." He takes a pointed bite of his own piece of toast and chews loudly. Keith scrunches his nose at him but doesn't say anything. Lance does the same back at him.

"What about pancakes or waffles?" Hunk suggests. "I personally prefer pancakes. You can put so many things in them and they're softer."

"Pancakes for sure," Pidge agrees. They chew a bite of egg and then say, "Keith likes waffles. He told me a few years ago on Salarus when we were eating those weird waffley things."

It's true; Keith is bizarrely pleased that he's shared something so mundane with Pidge. Keith grins at Pidge and nudges them a little. "Can you remember what my favorite--"

"Strawberry syrup," Pidge says, shuddering a little. "I don't know how you can eat that stuff, but if it's your favorite, I'll believe you."

"Everyone knows Keith has a sweet tooth," Lance says, and then freezes. They all look at him, but Keith is probably the only one who feels his heart skip a beat at how confidently Lance said that, like it's something he really knows. Keith hasn't had anything sweet since they've been in space back in their time, only food goo.

"I mean, I hadn't noticed but I guess you're right," Hunk says thoughtfully.

"The first time we saw him at the Garrison he was sneaking extra cookies from the mess hall," Lance says to Hunk, grinning. He seems to be avoiding looking at Keith directly, but it's probably not obvious to the others.  

Keith flushes pink, because it's definitely something he used to do, but he hadn't known Lance had seen him do it.

"You're right," Hunk says, snickering. "And then a few weeks later he was funneling ice cream into a giant container."

"I'm sorry I missed all this," Pidge says, smirking at Keith, who shrugs at them wryly.

"Well, _I_ can't believe we all missed that Keith had a huge crush on Lance when he was at the Garrison," Hunk says, voice teasing. Keith's entire body goes hot and then cold, stiffening, and Lance's fork clatters to his plate. "You totally had us going when you pretended you didn't know who he was when we were saving Shiro."

"Right, the whole 'who are you again' thing...classic Keith," Pidge says, laughing a little. Keith's stomach is going to crawl out of his throat and onto the table, but he forces himself to smile back at them.

"Well," he manages to say. He struggles for a moment to find words, his rabbiting heart threatening to choke him; he feels like he's caught in the crosshairs with nowhere to go. "I was -- it was a disappointing moment for me. I was trying to find alien activity and I ended up with you guys," he says, trying for levity. When he dares a glance at Lance, he's staring straight at Keith with wide eyes.

Fuck.

"I need to go -- check on something," Keith says abruptly, standing up from his chair.

"Okay dude," Hunk says agreeably. "I'll put your food on the warmer if you're not back soon."

"Thanks," Keith says, already headed for the door. "I'll be back."

He gets around the corner and starts running -- he doesn't have a destination in mind, just starts running as fast as he can. He goes left and right and then right again around corners, running with no set patterns, running until his lungs hurt and his legs ache, until he's sure he's as far away from the main area of the castle as he can be, until he lets his legs give out from underneath him and slumps to his knees.

He'd told them. Apparently Keith had told them about his feelings. He'd told them, which was probably fine for older Lance, but now _his_ Lance knew. Keith closes his eyes and clenches his fists and sucks in deep lungful after lungful, trying to focus on his breathing, trying to focus on calming down.

He should have known this would happen. He should have known it would always end with Lance figuring this out. It had been easy to hide it when they were still pretending to be strangers, when they were reluctant teammates, when they were tentative friends, even before all of this had happened. Keith sits back on his legs and presses his palms to his eyes, pressing until stars burst behind his eyelids, trying to ground himself in sensation for just one minute so he can stop thinking.

 _He knows_ , Keith tells himself. _He knows, but you can still pretend._

Keith just has to remind Lance that this could still be some alternate universe, or fake dreamscape, or anything but reality -- that they don't know this is their future, that they've always been operating under unsure parameters. He just has to make it convincing, just has to assure Lance that he hasn't been -- hasn't felt this way about Lance for _two years_ now, that there's no reason for Lance to try and let him down easy or reject him or anything, that it's fine. Everything is fine.

Everything is going to be fine.

He loses track of time, slumped in the middle of the hallway, trying to reassure himself that he's making a big deal out of a small thing. That Lance isn't going to look at him and confirm all his worst fears the next time they see each other. That --

"You couldn't make it easy on me by hiding in our room, could you?"

Keith's eyes close; he lets out a shuddering breath, desperately tries to reassure himself one last time, and stands up. When he turns around, Lance is standing behind him, chest heaving, sweat at his brow. Lance, but not Lance. A Lance Keith can't quite convince himself that he's really with in this nebulous future.

"Hey," he says. He hopes his voice is level. "I was just -- getting some exercise in. I got lost, so I was taking a break, but--"

"Keith." There's something soft and painful in Lance's voice. Something vulnerable that Keith has only heard a few times before. "Come on."

 _Everything is fine._ Keith clears his throat and says, "What?"

Lance's face is starting to look less vulnerable and more pitying, which is -- Keith clenches his fists and grits his teeth. Something painful takes up residence in his gut, throbbing in time with his heart beat.

"Keith, can't we just talk about it? And stop -- stop tiptoeing around everything? I mean," Lance says, breaking off to run his hand through his hair and sigh, "We should've talked about everything to begin with. Our relationship."

"I don't--" Keith starts to say, but Lance cuts him off again.

"If you don't wanna, let me. We've gone this whole time talking about us being in a relationship in the future as if it's like, some theoretically possible but ultimately unreal concept. Like we're separated from it." Lance takes a step closer, and Keith swallows. His eyes are fathomless, bluer than the gemstone on Keith's ring, softer than he thinks he can stand. "We were acting like this was all just a precursor to us being friends. And it was -- easier that way."

Keith gives in and takes a step back. "Lance, let's not. We've only got two more days, so--"

"You've been pretending too, right?" Lance asks. He doesn't step any closer but his gaze pins Keith to the floor; he almost feels that if he tries to move, something in him will tear away. "You've been content to let it just happen because it's scary to really think about it."

Keith doesn't know what to say.

"I didn't -- I didn't know," Lance says quietly. "That you felt that way. That you -- liked me. Especially not at -- not back then."

So much for pretending. So much for _everything is fine_. Keith crosses his arms over his stomach, settles his gaze somewhere around Lance's elbow, and says, "I didn't want you to know."

Lance exhales slowly. "Because you don't really wanna be with me?"

Keith's head jerks up. "What? What are you talking about?"

Lance's mouth firms into a line. This is starting to feel like battle again. "Did you only like me from a distance? Did you decide I wasn't worth the trouble when we actually got to know each other?"

"No?" Keith says, perplexed. "Why would I do -- I hid it because I don't want to get rejected, you asshole!"

"Who says I would reject you?" Lance asks, crossing his own arms.

"Um, every fight we've ever had, plus the fact that we're apparently _rivals_ in your eyes? You've never shown any interest in me," Keith says through his teeth, feeling every word drop into his stomach and writhe. Lance's face does something complicated, like he's cycled through too many emotions too quickly for Keith to read them. He settles on looking frustrated.

"You've never shown any interest in _me_ ," Lance insists. "What do you even know about--"

"You like to read books when you miss your family," Keith says. Lance goes silent, staring at him with wide eyes. "I mean, you do it more often than that, but especially then when you feel homesick. You got a perfect score on your practice exam for the fighter pilot course because you did sims every day for a month. Your favorite lotion smells like peaches. You love all your siblings but you're closest with your younger sister. You're -- you're a terrible dancer." Keith cuts himself off, dropping his gaze to the floor.

The silence stretches between them. Keith counts his inhales and exhales to try to keep from doing anything stupid, like running away again. He's just exhaled for the fourth time when Lance says, "You love the stars. Like, not in some vapid way, you really genuinely love flying out there. I can feel it when we're Voltron. You like sweets, but you especially like brownies. You love your older brother more than anything in the world. You loved him enough to drop school, even though that was your only chance at flying. You like to listen to music when you shower. You are also a very, very terrible dancer."

Keith huffs out a laugh before he's even aware he's doing it. When he looks up, Lance is smiling crookedly at him. Keith's insides are fluttering against his rib cage.

Something in Lance’s face firms, like he’s come to a decision. "Do you wanna go out with me?" he asks. He takes a step closer again, and this time Keith doesn't pull away.

"What?" Keith sputters, flushing red; the words echo around his head but he doesn’t trust that he really heard them.

Lance laughs and says, slower, very clearly, "Do you want to go out with me? Abrupt, I know, but I figure if you're not gonna ask, I might as well do all the work in this relationship." He takes another step. They're close enough that Keith could reach out and touch him.

"All the work?" Keith says indignantly, even though his skin is already buzzing in anticipation, even though he’s angling closer. "What are you even--"

Lance rolls his eyes and leans forward, kissing Keith on the mouth. It's almost chaste, just a press of lips and then Lance is pulling away again, but Keith shudders out a shaky breath and grabs his shirt, pulling him back in. This kiss is longer, deeper -- this kiss feels like every explosion he's ever seen, every fight he's ever won -- it's a heady thrill and it twists something inside of him into knots, like his body can't control itself. He feels hands come up to cup his face, and Lance tilts his head, and one of them lets out a soft noise, and Keith thinks, _yes,_ and --

Everything goes dark.

When he opens his eyes again, he's standing with his hand in Klessia's, and she's smiling gently at him. Lance stands on his other side, blinking wide eyes at him, but neither of them say anything. And it's Lance, _his_ Lance, Lance's smooth face and messy hair and sharp eyes. Keith's mouth still feels warm, even though he knows he hasn't actually kissed Lance in this time. His heart is still pounding in his chest.

"What happened?" Shiro asks, coming up to rest a hand on Keith's shoulders. "What did you do to them?"

"It's fine, Shiro," Keith says immediately. "We're -- we're fine, it was just a -- a vision."

"Yeah," Lance says, letting go of Klessia. He moves closer to Keith, arm brushing against his side. Keith swallows a hysterical laugh, because he was just _kissing Lance_ , they kissed, Lance _asked him out_. "It was no big deal. We're okay."

"Are you sure, Lance?" Allura asks, coming up on his other side. "You were quiet for almost a minute." She keeps her tone polite and measured, but her eyes are steely when they rest on Klessia. Behind the two of them, Coran waits with a furrowed brow, and Pidge and Hunk's hands hover at their sides, ready to call their bayards. Keith shakes his head minutely at them and they relax.

"Did you miss my voice that much, princess?" Lance asks, winking at her. Allura sighs, and then smiles at him. Shiro lets his hand linger on Keith's shoulder for a second and then pulls away. At their sides, where no one can see, Lance touches his thumb to Keith's pulse and his breath catches.

"Should we discuss the negotiations now?" Klessia asks. "I'm sure your paladins would appreciate getting to explore while we talk."

"If that's alright with you," Allura says. "Coran, stay with me? Shiro, would you please--"

"Of course, princess," Shiro says, sending her a smile. He gestures for the four of them to follow him, and when they're in the hall outside the meeting room, continues, "Okay, let's head out. Did you guys wanna check out that beach?"

"Oh heck yeah," Hunk says, grinning. "Lance, race you there?"

"Uh, I'll catch up in a second, buddy. I need to just check something real quick." Keith snorts, and Lance shoots him a look. Hunk looks between them and narrows his eyes at Lance, but Lance just stares back at him, smiling guilelessly. Shiro and Pidge have already moved ahead, Pidge excitedly chattering to Shiro about what they hope to find on this planet, and whether or not his arm would be okay in the ocean here. Hunk raises a brow at Lance, which must communicate something, because Lance quirks his mouth.

"Alright," Hunk says, shrugging. "Don't be too long, I think the day cycles on this planet are pretty short."

"No worries," Lances says, saluting him as he walks off. Keith stands quietly beside him, avoiding the pointed glance that Shiro throws at him before he and Pidge round the corner. "So," Lance says, shifting on the balls of his feet. "That was -- something."

"Yep," Keith says, popping the 'p' sound. Lance snickers and Keith feels something settle in his stomach, like he's finally fitting in his skin properly. "And yes, by the way."

"Yes?" Lance asks, wrinkling his nose. Keith turns to face him properly, feeling the edges of his mouth lift up in a half-smile.

"To your question. The answer is yes."

Lance's eyes clear of confusion, and then he's smiling brightly, and it looks so similar to the smile in their wedding photos that Keith feels his heart shiver in his chest.  

"Well," Lance says, still beaming. "Good." Keith feels tentative fingertips touch his hand, and he grabs Lance's hand and twines their fingers. He doesn't have a ring anymore, he realizes. He'd gotten used to the weight of it.

He'll have it again in the future.

"What now?" Keith asks. "I mean, we kept it a secret in the future. Do we still -- do you still want to?"

"Not to be superstitious, but I liked that future a lot," Lance says, pulling Keith along with him and walking down the hallway. He starts to swing their hands between them, and Keith is helplessly charmed. "I don't see any problem with going along with some of the stuff we found out about our future. I especially am okay with not dealing with Hunk and Pidge teasing us about all of this for as long as possible."

"Shiro is gonna be the worst," Keith mutters. "Okay, that's fine. You do realize that means I propose to you, right?"

"That we can change," Lance says blithely. "I think I should get to propose. You did it in the middle of a _fight_ , Keith, you clearly can't be trusted."

"You just said we should follow what we found out!" Keith points out, tugging Lance's hand pointedly. "Besides, you asked me out, I should get to propose."

"Nope," Lance says, popping the 'p' the way Keith had. "I'm gonna do it."

"We'll see," Keith promises darkly. Lance glances sideways at him, and Keith looks back, and they both dissolve into hysterics, laughter spilling out of them in gasps and stutters. "This is so weird," he admits when they finally calm down and catch their breath. "I don't know what to do."

"We'll figure it out," Lance replies, pulling Keith closer by their joined hands and kissing him on the cheek. "For now, I really wanna go check out the beach, and I wanna hang out with our friends, and I wanna stare at your face, _your_ face, while you deal with keeping our massive secret from your nosy older brother."

"Sounds fun," Keith deadpans, trying to control his blush. Lance squeezes his hand and flashes another smile at him.

"I'm pretty sure it will be," Lance says. Keith rolls his eyes but follows him out into the sunshine, looking forward to the future for the first time in a long time.

 

* * *

 

 6 YEARS LATER

 

The alarms in the castle are blaring -- Keith can hear them through Red's speakers. He grits his teeth and slams her into a tailspin, pushing her up and out just in time to avoid a blast from a Galra ship.

"We're gonna need to form Voltron," Pidge shouts; he can see them on the radar somewhere behind him. Lance muffles a curse over the comms and Keith automatically finds him, searching him out through their connection even as his eyes lock onto him through the screen.

"Doing okay, Lance?" Keith calls out, pushing Red into a forward arc that brings him closer to the others as he's speaking. Red rumbles excitedly under his hands, twining her way through his consciousness, a constant presence under his skin.

"Doing great, babe," Lance says lightly, finally spinning into view, glittering with ice remnants. Blue is battered and smoldering in places; the sarcasm in Lance's voice does not go undetected. "Got any more fantastic questions to ask mid-battle, sweetheart?"

Something clicks in Keith's mind, and he lets out a burst of laughter before he can help it. He feels Shiro and Hunk's surprise in the back of his mind, feels Pidge's confusion, but he lets their thoughts slip through his fingers to focus on Lance.

"As a matter of fact," Keith says, "I do."

"Wait," Lance says, catching on. "Wait--"

"Lance, will you--"

"Wait!"

"--marry me?" Keith finishes triumphantly. There's a long pause over the comms, all of the paladins sitting in shocked silence, and then Lance lets out a long, frustrated noise.

"You absolute asshole," Lance groans. "You just had to, didn't you?"

"You set it up for me," Keith says agreeably. He swings Red up close to Blue just as Hunk and Shiro arrive from where they'd been tag-teaming a bigger battleship.

"What's happening right now?" Shiro asks, baffled.

"I'd like to know that as well," Allura says. Pidge and Hunk have broken off into muffled snickers, barely audible over the alarms still going off.

"It's a yes or no question," Keith says to Lance, who blows out a heavy breath that sends static through Keith's ears.

"Of course," Lance says tartly. "You already knew." Keith swallows another burst of laughter, because he _does_ know. "I can't believe you actually did this. I can't kiss you mid-battle, Keith. Terrible planning. As usual."

"You can kiss each other when you've _finished fighting_ ," Allura interrupts.

"She's right, guys," Shiro says, but then adds, "Congratulations, though." They line up their lions, preparing to form Voltron so they can finish this fight; Keith always wants to win every battle, but now he's dying to get out of here and see Lance, to ask him again in person, to kiss the answer off his lips.

"About time," Pidge says, just as they start to fuse together, and Keith laughs, can't help but give into the giddiness that's welling up inside of him.

"You have no idea," he murmurs, and Lance's answering laugh stays with him through the rest of the fight.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some things that don't really feature but might be things you were wondering! 
> 
> 1\. Allura and Coran have found members of the Altean race who escaped a long time ago and formed their own rebellions! They're not really alone in the universe!  
> 2\. Shay and Hunk are together but Shay is with her people, still working on building their society. They visit each other when they can.  
> 3\. Sam Holt is alive and on Earth with his wife! He did not want to stay in space after everything that happened, although Matt saw the Castle of Lions and was like 'fuck yeah I want in on that' and decided to stay.  
> 4\. Allura and Shiro will get their shit together eventually, but for the time being, they're each other's best friends.  
> 5\. The Keith and Lance from the future did not go back to their young bodies -- they were kind of smooshed to the side of their mindspace and along for the ride, as it were, although younger Keith and Lance didn't know that. They wake up in the hallway where the dramatic confessions happened and go "thank god we're not like that anymore, huh?"  
> 6\. The story was originally going to have a darker cast to it (not all of their friends were going to make it to the future, and several of the paladins were going to have scars/disabilities/traumas they don't have now) but I decided that I wanted to make this an idyllic future or else it wasn't going to get written. I was in a bad place when I started writing this and it made me feel better to imagine a happy future, and I hope this fic did the same for you! 
> 
> I think that's everything major that I can think of! This was a lot of fun to write and I can't wait to see how season two goes and how I might be inspired. Thanks for reading! You can find me at [apvrrish](http://apvrrish.tumblr.com) on tumblr, and at [@apvrrish](http://twitter.com/apvrrish) on twitter!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this first part. As always, you can find me on tumblr at [apvrrish](http://apvrrish.tumblr.com), and on twitter at [@apvrrish](http://twitter.com/apvrrish).


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